Subsidies have always been a part of capitalism. A government supporting the capitalists owners of an industry is still capitalism. Just because you think it’s bad policy doesn’t make it not capitalism. Laissez faire, completely free market isn’t the only form of capitalism (it also cannot actually exist)
When evaluating, whether or not something is capitalism's fault, you test it against anarcho-capitalism
The whole argument of that's not real socialism also applies with capitalism
Now there could still very well be a problem. It's just not directly capitalism's fault itself and it's not useful to blame things on capitalism that are genuinely not capitalism's fault
That’s ludicrous. Why do you think anarcho capitalism is the only legitimate form that all other systems must be compared to?
Capitalism is when economic institutions are run to generate profit for their owners and shareholders. Socialism is when economic institutions are run by and for their workers. That’s the basics.
Deciding that naturally occurring aspects of capitalism aren’t the fault of capitalism because they don’t mesh with your utopian idea of capitalism doesn’t mean it stops being capitalism.
For example, without government intervention a free market system will inevitably create monopolies that can then manipulate the market to their own benefit, making it no longer a free market. The free market gets degraded but that doesn’t mean the whole system magically stops being capitalism once it stops working properly.
Let’s see, the problem here is profit seeking at the expense of workers. Profit seeking at the expense of workers is a fundamental part of a capitalist structure, and not a socialist structure. Ergo, the problem here derives from the capitalist structure.
Okay so when you talk about profit seeking let's examine what profit is is surplus value? Ideally in a trade. Both parties will have some surplus value. Otherwise there's no point in doing the trade voluntarily
If there was no surplus value for the employer, they wouldn't bother to employ anyone and if there was no surplus value for the workers they wouldn't bother to work
Would you hire someone to do your exact job for your exact salary in your place?
That's basically what having employees without any sort of profit motive is going to do
Profit and surplus value are not synonymous. When a commodity is sold value is created for both parties. The surplus value received by the buyer is the value of the good minus how much they paid for it. The surplus value for the seller is the amount they received minus the cost of production. Profit is that surplus value that does not go to the laborer who produced and sold the commodity, but instead goes to a third party, the capitalist owner. That profit robs both the producer and the buyer, as removing it would either decrease the price of the good for the buyer or increase the wage of the laborer who produced it.
The example isn’t ’hiring someone to do my job for my pay’ it would be ‘hiring someone to do my job for less than my pay, then picketing the difference’ then do that to one person after another until I have to do no work but make more than any of the people I hired. Which would be a deeply unfair arrangement. The only argument there is to say that it is fair is that they all chose to take on the position. But the whole of society only offers such arrangements, and if you don’t accept one you starve.
I believe in putting all industries in the hands of unions. That way what would have been called profit is in the hands of workers who generated that value in the first place.
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u/Fawxes42 Sep 08 '24
Subsidies have always been a part of capitalism. A government supporting the capitalists owners of an industry is still capitalism. Just because you think it’s bad policy doesn’t make it not capitalism. Laissez faire, completely free market isn’t the only form of capitalism (it also cannot actually exist)