Comment on They eliminated cashiers and keep the profits. NY Democrats are fighting back.
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 6 hours agoFYI capitalism kills 10 million people a year due to artificial housing and food scarcity alone, let alone wars.
Comment on They eliminated cashiers and keep the profits. NY Democrats are fighting back.
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 6 hours agoFYI capitalism kills 10 million people a year due to artificial housing and food scarcity alone, let alone wars.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Eh. I’m not really big on focusing on terms for political ideologies. I prefer boiling things down to “don’t be a cunt.”
The people who bitch communism or capitalism killed so many people aren’t really bitching about the concepts. The concept didn’t do anything. The corrupt people in charge willing to twist things to their own benefit and accept people dying so they or their friends/allies can have more than they need killed loads of people under every political ideology.
I don’t care if I live under either of those systems, but any system should have sane and fair caps to keep any individual or organization from amassing too much money, power, or control over the whole.
Say if the US had a 99% tax on every dollar a person earns per year over 1 million, and that was all inclusive of official income, stock options, bonuses, etc, then that would be a great change. Likewise with corporations. There should be a hard cap on valuation to keep corporations from owning each other in a giant pyramid so that the bulk of companies in the nation are all under the same actual control.
The tax code should clearly be fixed to keep companies from shifting money and values on paper and never paying anything. Tax breaks for companies shouldn’t exist. If we’re calling it capitalism than a company should be able to exist in fair competition with the rest without that socialist handout for them.
Private equity groups shouldn’t exist. They create and provide nothing, they simply purchase existing businesses and lower product cost/quality and increase prices to create false profit. Since the consumer would start going to any competing business that didn’t do that, it encourages buying entire industries to enshittify them and leave people no options but the higher prices and lower quality.
Some industries should not be run for profit. There should be laws and oversight in place to ensure the things that all humans need as a basic part of life are as accessible as possible. The things that come to mind offhand are medical care, a base level of housing for individuals and families, and basic foodstuffs. As the necessities of human life, those things would be kept profit free and made available at the lowest possible cost with heavy to complete tax subsidization.
Companies would be free (and encouraged) to deal in things medical care not actually necessary such as elective plastic surgery not done to correct a physical deformity, higher tiers of housing so people have more luxurious and spacious potential options, and cooked and heavily processed foods. The base level of these things being available cheaply or free would naturally limit the amount they could charge and so their profit, which would help keep any but the most insane homes from having insane costs. People would be able to get meat and potatoes and veggies and the like cheaply and not need to worry about starvation, but Oreos, frozen pizzas, and microwaveable frozen taquitos would cost more.
You could do all of that in a “capitalist” society. Base ideology isn’t an issue. Virtually every base ideology we bicker about was created to try to help make something better. The problem is that they need to be applied with sane, rational limitations and regulations and strictly kept free from corruption.
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
K
Abyssian@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I’m sorry that someone taking the time to type out a thoughtful response is such a bother for you.
DuncanTheDrunk@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
They obviously can’t engage, that could be a confrontation.
BTW I’m with you that any system can be abused, and it’s that abuse that is the true issue. However capitalism does seem to encourage greed and the consolidation of resources, which has to be actively regulated. It feels like it’s a losing battle as those who accumulate power will try to sidestep or remove any obstacles that prevent them from gaining more power.
I feel like we’re currently seeing some particularly egregious examples currently and I welcome the discussion of other systems because open and unbiased discussion could hopefully lead us somewhere better.
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
Do I seem bothered? I’d say Indifferent at best.