← Back to context

Comment by nopenopenopeno

3 years ago

Yeah, capitalism is a nightmare.

Capitalism generally happens successfully in societies with laws.

The difference with socialism is the state both defines the laws and decides how to allocate resources, which tends to result in a lot of poverty.

  • And in certain capitalist societies, the capital decides the laws and allocation of resources.

    At least in theory, in a democratic society, government should be elected by the people. Unfortunately there never was a democratic, socialist country, so it's hard to make statements based on observation with these matters.

    • Government might be elected but that's a really weak, confusing signal to decide all the spending a market currently decides.

      Imagine lumping millions of spending decisions into a binary choice, alongside policy positions and everything else a government represents.

    • There were many democratic socialist countries, unfortunately socialism devolves into tyranny in less than one election period. For example Czechoslovakia voted for communism freely by its own volition in 1946, and the communists started killing people the same year. It's not an individual's fault - many new unknown people started ruthlessly competing for absolute power as soon as it became available. Similar process happened in the entire Eastern Bloc.

      3 replies →

  • Government isn't an outside entity. Government is the people--except in a capitalist country where government is owned by corporations.

    • > Government is the people--except in a capitalist country where government is owned by corporations.

      In what country is this true? Was everyone in Soviet Russia the government? Why did they order the killing of themselves if so?

  • Depends on your definition of success.If one is Thinking of the long-term viability of the human race then capitalism can only be seen as a disaster if you look at it from a ecological perspective.

    • Capitalism doesn't happen without state and it is defined by the state, so it's a failure of state regulation, not capitalism itself. States must set different regulation and/or incentives. It's perfectly possible to have 100% ecological capitalism.

      10 replies →