Capitalism is criticized a lot on here (especially by American users, it seems to me). Most of that seems well-founded, but I also have the feeling that most of these complaints are simply venting and not the first step to improvement.

So I would like to know what specific changes you (especially Americans) want to see from lawmakers.

  • You’re coming off fairly condescending. Leftists of many stripes not only have thorough critiques of Capitalism, but offer a wide range of solutions, both legislative and grass-roots.

    There may be a lot of ranting, but most of it is based within robust theory and legislative efforts.

    Strengthening unions and workers rights laws is almost always advocated for. Weakening the ability for corporations to exploit their workers and the general population/environment is another.

    I’m an Agorist, that means I advocate fighting Capitalism from the ground up using grey and black markets to subvert existing Capitalist structures.

    So acquiring and distributing pirated materials like college textbooks and otherwise expensive software is one example. Helping people jailbreak/hack their devices to run unofficial software that the corporations don’t approve of is another.

    There’s lots of information out there, don’t mistake memes and ranting for empty idealism.

    • So acquiring and distributing pirated materials like college textbooks and otherwise expensive software is one example.

      That’s an interesting example, because in threads on AI lawsuits there are many calls for expanding intellectual property, without any consideration for public benefit. It’s such an outright doubling down on all the pathological aspects of capitalism. It made me look whether there are any equally concrete demands going the other way and eventually make this post.

      • Thanks for your reply, sorry if I came off aggressive in my initial response.

        For me I’m as hardcore anti-intellectual property as it gets. I think the very concept of IP is nonsense. And I don’t mean nonsense like it is stupid or silly or I don’t agree with the laws, I mean literally logically contradictory.

        I view laws against copyright/IP infringement the same way I would view a law against poaching unicorns.

        Despite the propaganda, IP law almost always protects giant corporations, not the “little guy.” It’s used to create and maintain multi-billion dollar IP portfolio monopolies. It supresses creativity and literally kills people in the case of pharma companies and their ridiculous drug patents.

        I would love at a minimum for copyright to have a hard limit no matter the conditions. Like for all creative works, 20 year hard limit. After that, no matter what, it enters public domain forever. There are a million issues to work out, but not being able to hold IP for literally a century in some cases would be something.

  • The youtube channel, Economics Explained, has a lot of great videos on macroeconomic concepts. They recently featured a video on Norway pointing out how it handles its economy near perfectly.

    The video explains Norway got pretty lucky, and it’s not like every country could straight up copy them and succeed, but the major points are:

    1. Their massive natural resource reserves are majority owned by the government. The government puts the profits from this into stable long term investments to benfit the citizens of the country. In many other countries, natural resources have been sold to private companies for a one time payment and private shareholders now benefit from the long term investment.
    2. Their government has one of the highest tax rates in the world, even though they earn so much profit from natural resources they could literally have a 0% tax rate. Despite this massive tax rate, Norway has some of the lowest emigration of people and companies. Nobody has fled the country due to high taxes like many fear would happen elsewhere.
    3. Their government spends heavily on social welfare and ensuring a high quality of life for all of its citizens, and their companies provide short work weeks and long vacations, which are huge reasons why nobody has left.

    I think when people say they hate capitalism, what they mean is they hate working 50 hour weeks at a job they hate for a boss who treats them like dirt for a salary that doesn’t even pay their rent while the CEO has more wealth than small nations and spends it on eating endangered animals on their mega yatch with politicians and judges who then pass laws making it legal to hire children and dump garbage into the ocean. They don’t really care about private companies and investments, they care about how sociopathic greed has become so normal that it’s actively defended.

      • Not quite. Everywhere has a resource of something - it may not be a natural resource like minerals or valuable liquids, it everywhere has something.

        The difference is how these have been used to invest. Norway invests in itself by keeping those resources internal. As the user said, the people and its government could choose not to pay taxes, but they still do. That has a huge gain on the longevity of resources because now the investment from them is actually being compounded upon from its people and its resources.

        Other countries simply do not put investments in themselves. As the user said, they sell off these assets or let the claim go to a corporation which then maximizes its profit potential instead of sustaining it. (in some cases, the country had little to no choice so it’s not entirely a fault of that government but a poor handling of circumstances). We sell our resources, our people pay taxes, there is no compounding happening. The resources are now gone, the money has dried up, and the people are being pumped for the rest.

  • First off, wealth and power are the same thing and must be dealt with at the same time. So for a start…

    1. Aggressive progressive taxation, up to 100% (billionaires - even 9-figure multimillionaires- must never be allowed to exist).

    2. Abolish stock markets.

    3. All companies must be employee-owned. Employees share equitable ownership of the companies they work within. Profits are shared only among employees.

    4. Criminalize political spending, lobbying (aka bribery), etc. Candidates all draw from a public fund and platforms and that is all they may use.

    5. Aggressive market regulation to protect competition and prevent consolidation. Our failure to protect the market from excess consolidation and integration is the primary reason we’ve reached the late-stage capitalism hellscape we currently exist within.

    Again, this is a start… the tip of the iceberg.

    There is a massive amount of leftist documentation on economics. We’re not all communists, but we recognize that any system devoid of regulation/oversight/accountability will always quickly travel rightward and become authoritarian. So the question is what systems and policies can be put in place to ensure not only equity for all, but equity that remains stable indefinitely (or as close as is possible).

      • Everyone from Karl Marx to President Obama has said the same thing, we aren’t going to change the system overnight. The funniest thing in the world is watching the local “revolutionaries” who have been screaming for overnight change for decades. Look at what happened in Russia after they kicked out the old Soviet system. A few guys like Putin snatched up everything at fire sale prices and the regular folks got less than nothing.

  • Personally, I want to see the removal of capitalism, as it is a terrible system, alongside other oppressive systems like the State. Because that doesn’t happen overnight, and it isn’t something congress would ever vote on, I support strong social systems, high taxes on the wealthy and corporations, strong environmental protections, and especially legislation that strengthens communities. Strong worker protections and benefits wouldn’t be bad to see either.

  • I believe that Capitalism is great to get out a country of poverty and developed into a advance economy with wealth build for all of citizens. But just think about this : infinite grow? Does it make sense? For us humans and for the planet? So companies can keep breaking profit records each year. In my opinion that a very unstable system , we have finite resources on earth and we should instead reuse them and make them more reusable so in that case probably infinite grow can make sense. But since that cost money and then it will harm grow and everyone will freak out that a company didn’t grow more than last year but still made billions.

  •  lily33   ( @lily33@lemm.ee ) 
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    1 year ago

    Well, for starters:

    1. Platforms. I don’t believe that the people who create, or invest in, large internet platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Uber, Booking, Upwork, etc, have a natural or moral right of ownership to said platform. They should certainly receive returns on their investment - but they shouldn’t have full operational control. Instead, as the platofrm grows, operational control should slowly transition to its users. eventually, they should have the final say on, in the case of YouTube. what content in acceptable, what procedures should be used to remove unacceptable content, how to appeal, etc.
    2. Employment. One of the big issues I see is that employees are under someone’s direct control for 1/3 of each day, and have to do what their boss says. And while they technically consented to that relationship, I don’t see that consent as freely given, because for most people there isn’t a viable alternative. This could be done through more worker cooperative, or encouraging freelancing. Even for people who decide to remain in traditional employment, they should have more official control than they do now.
    3. AI. It seems many people here hate AI, but AI does have the potential for large productivity gains. And while, in the past, productivity gains have note resulted in less work, but rather higher GDP, we could always force the issue. After all, people did it ~100 years ago, and the economy didn’t collapse because of that.
  • So, capitalism is itself defined more than one way depending on who’s talking, and I only have a problem with some versions of it:

    In the sense that certain people get to just own stuff, while others have to work, I’d say capping wealth at like 7 digits would be a simple solution. You can save up a few million across a high-earning but normal career, but nobody makes it to 8 unless they’re a bigshot. Over time random social mobility should hopefully smooth out the remainder of class distinctions. If not, maybe 6 digits, although some dentists are going to be pissed.

    In the sense that we organise our economy around profit motive and competition, I don’t have an issue with it because it seems to work well. If you need to buy something, there’s always somebody selling it and vice-verse. If you look at history, or at the crazy supply chains that exist to facilitate that, it’s quite an achievement.

    In the sense that people privately own the means of production, there’s a bit of a trick deciding what the means of production even are. A foundry definitely counts, and a toothbrush definitely doesn’t, but what about a van, which you could use personally or to transport people? You could licence them separately depending on use, but then you couldn’t work as a “rideshare” even if there was a major shortage of taxis, which is dumb red tape. It’s far more productive to talk about things in terms of their market value rather than getting any more granular, which is why the law usually does that.

    • This comment really speaks to how I feel.

      In addition to flattening the wealth curve on the high end, I think the first change I would want is to increase the federal minimum wage. For decades wages have been stagnant while cost-of-living has grown which has led to mass economic insecurity. I think a lot of current political tension is a direct result. That makes it difficult to cooperate to implement policies that would help people.

      • Basic income - probably at right where our minimum wage is now - would be my solution to the poverty at the other end. Honestly that’s more important, but it didn’t really fit into the format of my post so well.

        Some other assorted economic policies on my wish list: Publicly-funded elections, the end of restrictive residential zoning, bigger carbon taxes right around the social cost, very open economic immigration policy, a government sponsored system for opening up intellectual property, and maybe some sort of single-payer law system because it’s a bit shit you can buy justice sometimes.

        A lot of people would call me a communist for this. Communists are currently telling me I’m an idiot in another thread. Thankfully we live in an open society where I can just do my own thing and it doesn’t matter.

  •  shrugal   ( @shrugal@lemm.ee ) 
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    11 months ago

    I think capitalism can work fine if we limit the amount of stuff any one person can own. Having a few million $ seems fine to me, but everything above that leads to problems. I know this sounds like a very simple measure, but it would have huge implications.

    •  laxu   ( @laxu@sopuli.xyz ) 
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      41 year ago

      Infinite growth and the shittification of services and products while exploiting labor to make that happen are the real problems.

      Billionaires should not exist and companies should be doing what is best for the company, its employees and customers, not what pleases their stockholders.