Comment on You have nothing to lose but your brains
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks agoThe Capitalist ideal is that you don’t need a state, cause if everyone only maximizes their own wealth with no barriers for the market, it will somehow work out to everyone’s best interest in the end.
If a global trillion $ corporation does shitty things, people will freely choose to buy from a newly sprung up competitor who doesn’t do that.
Homeless people won’t freeze in the street cause a benevolent billionaire will choose to help them.
And somehow, that system can keep growing exponentially forever in a world with limited resources.
We’re as far away from ideal functioning Capitalism as from ideal functioning Communism.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The thing is that capitalism isn’t an ideology like communism. Capitalism is a purely economic system. There are ideologies built around it, but capitalism itself is not one. Capitalism can exist under wildly different ideologies and produce wildly different result. India, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Iceland are all capitalist but they very different from each other. That’s because capitalism is more like a tool. Communism actually tries to layout how a society should ideally be run economically, politically, and socially. The counterpart to capitalism is not communism, but socialism.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I disagree. Capitalists are definitely pushing towards running everything in society on economic principals, letting private businesses take over public infrastructure, social services, culture, communication and defense.
It just isn’t fully realized anywhere (yet).
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean the US isn’t the definition of capitalism. It’s just one hundreds of examples. There are other countries that do capitalism way better like Denmark for example.
Also a big part of capitalism is the idea that different factions will compete for influence. The idea is that the different fingers of the invisible hand (the government, the public, capitalists, corporations, institutions, NGOs, the media, etc) are going to keep each other in check. If tension breaks and things fall out of balance then you basically get a dystopia. That’s why checks and balancing is one of the most crucial things to any successful capitalist system. It’s also the reason why capitalism in the US is heading down the wrong direction. Money in politics has thrown everything out of whack.