13% federal and 50+ at the bank - that is crazy!
The capitalist system is designed to transfer money and produce from the poor to the rich.
It is not the capitalist system per se, it is the way this one is set up - it is going to collapse.
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
How is the capitalist system per se not designed like that? I will expand on my thought, and hope you can expand on yours.
(generalizing)We, as a society, as workers, work for someone that expects to extract surplus from our labor, so effectively we work to transfer value to the "higher ups". When we consume we need to pay a profit, again, tranfering value to the higher ups.
Both when we work (produce) and when we buy (consume) we pay a "fee" to the owners of the means of production. When we work the fee is the surplus and when we consume the fee is the profit.
What is happening is that it is not sustainable, they can't increase exploitation at this moment, they can't exploit more work or more consumers. We see crisis every now and them and the exploitation has to be exarcebated to keep the profits, because the owners of the industries just can't reduce their profits.
The rise in interest is related to that, because we are not producing and consuming as much due to recent world events they need to raise the interests, and that is a very direct way of extracting the fee, they don't need anyone to work and don't need to sell anything, people will have to take loans and pay them those hiked up fees.
Working and consuming is an indirect way of exploting people, it is so subtle it sometimes may not even feel like exploitation, but interest raising is a very direct way of exploitation and something the capitalist elite need to resort to when they can't be subtle.
And the system is designed like that because the rich and the industrialists own the politics and the countries. Ask the people, would the people want an interest increase? No one wants that, I would go as far as saying 90% of the population, or more, is strongly against interest rate increases, but the 90% of the people do not hold any power, the capitalists do. Because the capitalist have the power they can raise the interest. Sum it all up, capitalism is designed like that. Rich people, all over the world, from USA to Australia going through Brazil, they can control the economy even going against 90%+ of the population, they can and they did design this system like this.
The current system is not a capitalist system.
As said, the current system will collapse, but a capitalist system is about private ownership, not state. What it means is a free -market system, not a protected system like we have today where the incentives are misaligned. In a "real" capitalist system, the free market would far better manage, as it would recalibrate whenever the market thought it was necessary.
Like anarchism?
If you are trying to say anarchism without saying anarchism, I would argue that every society was born anarchist, or was anarchist at some point. The problem is that it is inevitable that some people will get richer than others, and because capitalism literally means power of the capital, soon enough the rich people will become the new government.
It is inherent to a stateless, or a weak state society, and that has happened in every society in every corner of the earth at some point.
Name one place where capitalism was born or evolved naturally and where a state was not an important aspect, where the government was almost not existent, where the state was not born from capitalism and where a state did not interfere with private means.
The recent spike in interest rates all over the world shows that every single country is looking for the well being of their capitalists, and when I say capitalists I mean the elites.
Because it is so generalized and is happening in all continents, but someone tells me that is because it is not true capitalism, to me then it goes to show that capitalism just can't be done right.
It is a natural processes. Change or overthrow the government, someone richer than the average will rule in their place and become an authoritarian government.
To me we live in a capitalist society and to me capitalism is doomed to fail, to you it seems "true capitalism" was never ever implemented? Or was it implemented but failed? And anyways, what would make a society "truly capitalism" and protect against an eventual (and in my opinion inevitable) failure?
I am not sure about this at the core, because if this is the case regardless of the rate, this is just a spectrum. If it is for elites, it is always just a factor of degrees. That means that what they are trying to do is find the balance between extracting as much as possible and revolution. This tends to be the case by the way.
I'd say that the state is more unnatural than capitalism, as say in the case of a tribe, the tribe owns all, but works in a capitalist way to maximize the outcomes for all. The state doesn't act in this way at all, it works to maximize itself, regardless of the outcomes of the people. This includes giving additional benefits to some over others, like tax reductions etc.
For me, a decentralized free market is superior, but all systems will face the same challenge as those who are better at generating value, will own more than those who are not. This means that redistribution events will always happen at some level. The difference is, at what level this happens - is it where people abandon a company like Splinterlands if it gets too greedy and forgets about its userbase or, nuclear war.
That doesn't make sense to me. Both states and capitalism are natural. States are so natural that states were born every single time in every human society, eventually. No matter how remote in time or space. Europe, Asia, Africa, even the Americas, before colonization, had states in different shapes.
The social organization doesn't necessarily relate to the organization of production. There can be a feudal state, there can be a monarchy state, there can be a republic state, there can be a socialist state, there can be a fascist state and there can also be tribes as a form of state. All of those states can use or not use capitalism in different forms because the society, production and economy are "Lego parts".
Now, tribes economy and production definitely do not work in a capitalist manner, not that they can't try but due to the social organization capitalism doesn't make sense. Tribes don't even need capital. In tribes everyone work as they can and get as they need. If tribes were capitalist the members of the tribe that could not harvest, hunt or forage would starve, and the "owners" of the tribe would not need to work, but that is not the case. The Brazilian tribes I have visited share the work and the production equally between all members that can work or that need the produce, that is possibly the opposite of capitalism.
Now in capitalism, specially due to unhealthy rent seeking behavior (like raising interests) it happens that those that can't work may not be able to eat, and those who live through interest and ownership of the financial system may be able to not only survive, but thrive and influence society without working. Capitalism, looking at both history and present, seeks not to maximize the outcome for all, but quite the contrary, seeks to minimize the outcome for most and maximize the outcome for few, because if it doesn't then people will be equal and it would become a tribe eventually. Maximize the surplus extracted from workers, maximize the profits from profits, and now maximize the yield on their capital through interests.
If there is no exploitation then capitalism would collapse because eventually people would become equal and we would become a huge tribe, why would we even need money and capitalist financial systems if everyone can work without exploitation and get their needed share of the produce? If that happens it is not capitalism. Capitalism is exploitation because without exploitation it would be a matter of time for us to become either a tribe or a socialist utopia.
The production and the work is socialized, all society participate in producing goods and services, but the result of the work, both the financial (surplus/profit) and material (products/services) are directed to the rich capitalist because they own the means of production and because the (work need for) production is socialized they own the society. The work is ours, the result is their. That is the basis of capitalism and without it in a few decades it would not be capitalism anymore. It would be awesome, but then suddenly the former owners of society would not have their privileges, because if the produces and profits were not exploited they would not have their overabundance, and that is why in capitalism the elites can not allow exploitation to end and the rate of profit to fall. If exploitation ends, or steadily decreases and we become a tribe or a socialist utopia they (capitalist elite) would not be "kings", they would have to become workers as a natural development of society.
As an example, Jeff Besos, that dude has yatches and planes but he definitely doesn't need them. He can afford that because of massive exploitation. Does he need massive yatches and planes? No. Does he produce enough to make yatches and planes? No. If he did not exploit he would never have that.
If the way tribes work maximizes the outcome for all, and our society aims to minimize the outcome for most, then to be "efficient" like a tribe the products and profits of production need to be socialized as much as the work is. Capitalism is failed because exploitation leads to the shit show we are seeing, and without exploitation it would not be capitalism anymore.
You have a lot of time on your hands.
Nature doesn't make states- humans do. They are natural in the sense that humans are natural, but as we should know, dinosaurs are natural too, nature killed them also.
I do understand where you are coming from, as it is the common understanding of it. But for example, Jeff Bezos isn't wealthy because he exploits, he is wealthy because we let him exploit. We make him rich, he doesn't make himself rich - we are the enablers here. We could do differently, we don't need to buy from Amazon. We could do differently, we don't need to use fiat currencies. We could do differently, we don't need to do what we are told - but we do do what we are told, don't we?
No human system will ever work on benevolence.
So you think we have a choice?