Why are folks so anti-capitalist?locked

o_o@programming.dev to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 453 points –

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!

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I'm just gonna tell you what happens when pure capitalism would exist in a country.

There would be no taxes. That sounds alright, but listen: Everything is on a market. Healthcare, education, everything. There is competition for everything. That means companies will have to do stuff to win you as a customer. One big company in every industry sector will win and buy all the other companies that have gone bankrupt. Then, we have monopolies and the big companies can raise their prices however they want and control us in every way they want.

To take it further, no taxes also means privately owned roads and other forms of public infrastructure.

I don't think pure capitalism as you describe it exists, or if it does its definitely not common.

We may not be quite there yet, be we're firmly going in that direction. An ever smaller number of gigantic corps owning ever more of... everything.

The mechanistic reasoning might be plausible, but is there any actual examples of a modern capitalist society regressing back to some form of feudalism to any significant degree?

The point where I'd be worried is when a single company is the majority of a country's GDP or has complete control over the government. The only examples I can think of that even get close to these possibilities are South Korea's Chaebols or Hong Kong's corporate voting block.

Yes, that pure capitalism does not exist, that is correct. But that is what pure capitalism would look like and the question was why people don't like capitalism

Hmmm, I guess I don't like the reasoning "extreme version of complicated idea is bad, therefore the idea is bad in general". Like its fine to dislike an idea's extremes, but it would be disingenuous to also dismiss its more moderate forms.