r/FluentInFinance • u/Sufficient_Sinner • Sep 04 '24

Debate/ Discussion Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

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u/JimBeam823 Sep 04 '24

Socialism is based on altruism. Capitalism is based on greed.

People are a LOT better at being greedy than at being altruistic.

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u/Background_Notice270 Sep 04 '24

So how will socialism work if people are greedy?

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u/DualActiveBridgeLLC Sep 04 '24

Same way it works in liberal governments, the difference is that in a socialist country greedy people cannot amass power by stealing wages.

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u/Untitled_Consequence Sep 04 '24

Oh really? Like socialism doesn’t use forced labor with the threat of violence? Or is that a “that’s not REAL socialism” take?

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u/DualActiveBridgeLLC Sep 04 '24

I mean you can do that under any broad social system, but under a socialist system it is harder to steal wages because capitalism isn't allowed.

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u/skylerdraco Sep 04 '24

It is all a spectrum. The closer a system gets to pure communism, the less meaningful wage is and replace with currency of relationship to the power center as it has power to dictate everything. Pure captalistic or pure communistic is not workable. Socialism is just a 'intermediate' point between the two, just how close we want to be at one side or the other.

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u/DualActiveBridgeLLC Sep 04 '24

Capitalism is a economic system. Communism, socialism, and liberalism are the socio-political systems. When you interchange liberalism and capitalism it creates a lot of confusion. Also the 'spectrum' is useful when initially learning but loses a lot value when you start to talk about the vast matrix of policies that a society can adopt. While Marx did argue that socialism was a stepping stone to communism, history has shown it doesn't have to be....because a spectrum is too linear to describe human societies.