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!
It’s because everyone here has only ever lived under capitalism, and they see all its issues and think socialism/communism would solve them.
I used to work with two former USSR expats - one Polish, one Russian. (I was 30 years younger than them.) We were a small crew and would work away from home for weeks at a time, so we’d spend a lot of our down time talking. They did sometimes reminisce about the things they liked from the old country, but they were very clear that their live was so much better once they left.
People on Lemmy have this romantic idea of communism. That you’ll work 15 hours per week doing something the like, like selling old books or gardening, and the state will provide everything you need. But in reality, under communism you will be assigned a job, assigned a house, and you’ll be happy about it. And if you complain, the state will take things away from you, because the state controls everything - your job, your house, your savings - they’re all government controlled. You can’t have freedom under communism. Don’t like your job - too bad, you’ll do it until you retire. You can’t take a gap year to find yourself (unless you count the compulsory military service), you can’t move to another city because you prefer the vibe there, you can’t start a business because you had a good idea.
Communism only sounds good if you’ve never lived it, and never really spoken to someone who has.
(Being Lemmy, I fully expect someone to respond saving that the USSR wasn’t real communism, and that they could design a communist system better than Marx or Lenin.)
I’m an immigrant that has worked extensively in the legal community with immigrants. I’m more than aware of what other regimes are like.
That being said, what I’d like to see is more nuance. There’s this bizarre belief, and I’m not sure if it’s age or lack of education, that says that only pure capitalism or pure socialism is BEST. When, in actuality, I don’t think a healthy society can exist without the other. Pure capitalism will eat itself without the checks socialism brings; whereas pure socialism will reify itself into inertia without the incentives capitalism brings. The trick, of course, is finding a balance.
Unless you’re an insane person like Maggot Trash-Garbage, I don’t think anyone thinks the FDIC is bad, or government funding for new antibiotics, or NASA, or necessary municipal utilities like sewage systems or fire fighters. All of that stuff is socialism, and they work great along side capitalism. I also don’t think the average person thinks breaking up monopolies is bad. Anti-trust laws and legislation are also socialism, remember.
Anyone who wants a free-market completely devoid of government intervention has clearly never studied economics.
The most important book regarding capitalism is “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. It’s the first book any education on economics will ask you to read. It in, Smith states that the role of government should be 3 main points: defence, law and order, and public services. So the person regarded as the father of capitalism would consider NASA, firefighters and sewerage to all be government responsibilities.
The Wealth of Nations was written at a time when government intervention was the cause of monopolies, not a solution to it.
As the free market was embraced in different countries, economists saw it operating and built on Smiths work. Pigou wrote about “externalities” (such as pollution) where the person benefiting is not paying all the costs of production, and that this required government intervention to correct the imbalance this causes in the free market.