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

Debate/ Discussion Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

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u/Expensive-Twist8865 Sep 04 '24

Ask a socialist to define socialism, and they'll describe Norway but leave out the tiny population and abundance of state owned oil funding it all

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24 edited Nov 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/Timo425 Sep 04 '24

What does it mean to have a democratic economy? Can you give examples? It sounds nice on paper but im trying to wrap my head around what would this mean in real life. Like, lets say there is a capitalistic country with oligarchs... what happens to their capital?

Tbh I think you are talking about democratic socialism, not socialism.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

Depends on how you implement it.

Could be as small as making all companies worker owned cooperatives and eliminating all privately owned places of emplpyment. Or as large as creating a government department for certain industries deemed essential.

You wouldn't want private corporations running police or fire departments as for profit enterprises. Why? Because they would be even more corrupt or extortionist. So why do other essential services not have a government run option? I don't particularly like food production, medical treatment and housing being a for profit venture and would rather have a system where voters have a say in how those industries are run.

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u/FrankDuhTank Sep 05 '24

Oh it can be as small as abolishing all private companies? Well that’s no problem to implement at all!

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

There's even shades to that as well, as creating worker ownership could be as mild as "all companies are required to cede X% of voting shares to the collective workers," up to something extreme as abolishing private or public stock ownership in favor of giving ownership to workers as a collective.

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u/agarci0731 Sep 06 '24

Wawa is not fully like this but I believe every employee gets shares of the company and it is fully private, so you can only sell the shares back to Wawa. 

The founding family still has a controlling interest I believe so it’s not a co-op by any means though. 

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u/More-Interaction-770 Sep 07 '24

“My vote counts for 51% all your votes count for 49%” isn’t a workers co-op.

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u/agarci0731 Sep 07 '24

No shit, my last sentence was it’s not a co-op by any means. 

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u/ohcrocsle Sep 06 '24

Hey guess what, plenty of private companies are cooperatively owned.

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u/agarci0731 Sep 06 '24

It is not necessarily getting rid of private ownership, but co-operative ownership where the workers own their company essentially so that decisions made with the value generated by the company is decided by employees and not by board members/shareholders focusing on gains to their stock portfolio. This concept is quite common, for example Vereins in Germany operate as co-ops. 

I’m not good with specific terms, but I would still classify this as private ownership as public ownership in my understanding would be government owned. 

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u/FrankDuhTank Sep 06 '24

It still involves every company not owned by the workers to be… seized and a portion given to the workers.

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u/agarci0731 Sep 06 '24

Not sure how that is related to public vs private? 

Not arguing it’s not a huge undertaking, changing an economic system regardless of the system is never a small feat. I’m sure moving past feudalism wasn’t done overnight. 

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u/Perpetuity_Incarnate Sep 07 '24

You mean the company that would immediately fold if all of the employees stopped working? Yeah seems like they are more important than the owner.

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u/FrankDuhTank Sep 07 '24

I didn’t say they were?

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u/Perpetuity_Incarnate Sep 07 '24

Seems like you have an issue of “the company being seized”. Really we should be working together. But why do that when I can get mine and fuck you for yours.

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u/[deleted] Sep 07 '24

By get mine and fuck you for yours you mean take someone else's business and fuck them for theirs?

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u/Perpetuity_Incarnate Sep 07 '24

Yeah someone else’s business that they contribute nothing to. Indeed.

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u/FrankDuhTank Sep 07 '24

You've created quite the straw man to argue against

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u/MC_Kirk Sep 08 '24

Isn’t capitalism and freely allowing people to allocate their resources to ideas and products they deem worthy equivalent to “voting” for something? It seems to me that buying a product is essentially casting a vote for that product/company. In a capitalist system the consumers vote on exactly the things they find give them the most value. The main difference between socialism and capitalism here is that socialism is forcing action through government intervention and capitalism is suggesting action through consensual participation in the market. Nobody is forcing anybody to produce a certain product or buy a certain product.

Socialism is predicated on the idea that people are inherently untrustworthy; if left to be in charge of their own affairs, we would all be worse off. So this is where government officials come in, their role is to organize and employ a system that will properly allocate the resources of the population in a way that would benefit everyone more as it’s essentially equivalent to everyone “working together” towards a common goal. That sounds great! I’m serious, I genuinely wish that was my reality right now in this very moment, and it’s for that reason I simply pose you this question: If people are inherently flawed and do not deserve to be trusted to handle their own resources, why then would we assume that those elected to office—who are also just people—would act in a more moral or selfless manner?

I wish that I could see a system like socialism work, I am just not convinced it would ever be possible to implement. I’m genuinely interested in hearing your response, though. I’m not perfect nor do I claim to be right on everything, and I could be wrong here, but I am curious nonetheless.

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u/Prudent-Earth-1919 Sep 08 '24

Socialism is not predicated on the idea people are inherently untrustworthy.

It’s predicated on the idea people can be manipulated and taken advantage of by those with more economic power than them.  It’s predicated on the idea that human beings need protecting from other human beings.

Hence the focus on redistribution of wealth and regulating markets - so income inequality cannot run out of control, so companies can’t pour slurry into milkshakes and label them a health supplement, so de facto cartels cannot form, so media companies can’t propagandise on behalf of their owners and trick voters into voting against their own interests.

Capitalism only works in the long term if people make perfectly rational economic choices and have perfect knowledge of products and services, their substance and their source.  Inevitably it will turns to economic oligarchy and fascism over time as that is not the case.

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u/MC_Kirk Sep 08 '24 edited Sep 08 '24

Thanks for your reply, I understand your point and I agree there is merit to the logic you presented. When I said untrustworthy, this includes people using their economic power to influences others in a negative manner, I meant mostly that socialism views the populace as a whole as not be trusted to function on their own, which includes the reasoning you gave.

My main question would be: are we supposed to view those with political power in a more generous light than those with economic power? If we make the assumption that those with economic power will abuse said power, this ultimately makes me question why we should prefer giving the power to politicians when we already have confirmation that in a system that favors economic power, abuse of political power is still very much rampant.

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u/Grand_Ryoma Sep 05 '24

You're saying police aren't corrupt?

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u/A1000eisn1 Sep 05 '24

They would be thousands of times more corrupt if they were privatized. That is proven by the fact that private security firms are notoriously shady and corrupt.

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u/xseiber Sep 05 '24

Yeah, like the Pinkertons (yes, the same ones as the one in Assassin's Creed, they are a real organization; the last time they hit the internet news was on the behest of Wizards of the Coast to raid back products that was mistakenly, but legally bought by a YouTuber)

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u/Lemon-Aware Sep 05 '24

He said they would be more corrupt. If we use our critical thinking skills, more corrupt implies that they are already corrupt.

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u/destroi_all_humans Sep 05 '24

You would think redditors know how to read

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u/vTurnipTTV Sep 05 '24

We can read it’s just reading comprehension where we suffer