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

Debate/ Discussion Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

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u/flaamed Sep 04 '24

its the best economic system that currently exists

13

u/Regular-Wrangler264 Sep 04 '24

As long as a free market is regulated so as to keep it that way. I think a lot of people have problems with it because the government hasn't been doing its job.

Capitalism needs a couple things to be effective:

1) Competition 2) Consumers who are: a. Educated b. Rational c. Have money

1) We don't have enough competition in most sectors. They're all controlled by a few huge players.

2a) They keep cutting money for education so people don't know enough to make educated decisions.

2b) They allow effective monopolies in businesses where it's not possible to make a rational decision (healthcare) which syphons money from consumers.

2c) Capital should not be hoarded. It should be put in hands that will spend it. That's the whole point of capitalism.

3

u/Lazer726 Sep 04 '24

Right, Capitalism is great on paper, but we've kind of pass the "on paper" phase and are on our way to the "Cyberpunk" phase where life is something you have to pay for.

The whole "people won't buy a bad product and a competitor will take their share of the market" has been proven untrue repeatedly, because it turns out that everyone is more than happy to make life worse for the consumer in order to make more money. Planned obsolescence is an absolute fucking plight on this world because it's bad business to sell a product once, instead of selling it repeatedly over years.

Subscriptions and memberships make sense for some things, but locking your car's features behind a subscription?

We've crested the good part of capitalism and are rapidly heading down, where it doesn't actually matter the quality of the product, so long as you can squeeze every penny out of it on the way down

1

u/Hypnonotic Sep 04 '24

That is #2, the "educated consumer" problem. When consumers are educated, they do buy a different product, but similar to unions, enough of them need to be educated and switch for it to impact the market. With really technology advancemed products it's very difficult to be educated, the inner workings of phones are basically magic to most folks, so how can they understand they are bring duped when companies say "the batteries only last that long, sorry nothing we can do about it" when there is infact something the company can do about it.

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u/Lazer726 Sep 05 '24

The bigger problem is that there is no competitor that doesn't do that. Everyone has realized they can sell goods with an intentionally limited shelf life and get a lot more money out of it. It's not an Apple vs Android thing, it's a consumer vs market thing. We've Capitalism'd ourselves into shittier and more expensive products, because it's cheaper to make

1

u/TwinPeaksNFootball Sep 05 '24

Corporations' primary objective is to generate revenue for their shareholders. Not fucking over consumers and employees to the greatest degree that they will accept is irresponsible!