• ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      As much as economists like to pretend, capitalism is not a political system. The goal is exploitation because we choose so. As a society we could just as easily choose to make our goal the maximal fulfillment of the needs of the public. All that takes is preventing those without a personal concept of “enough” from controlling capital.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        That’s just not possible when you factor in both accumulation of wealth (it’s exponential like compound interest) and the competition between capitalists for profit. The competition does not come from their moral beliefs but from the incentives created by the system itself.

        All that takes is preventing those without a personal concept of “enough” from controlling capital.

        This would require to remove capital from the hands of individuals and either throw it in the hands of the state, or change its (corporate) ownership to co-op model (one worker - one vote). Both have been shown to work but that would no longer be capitalism but instead a form of socialism, as private capital would no longer dictate what’s produced in the economy and how it’s distributed. Instead it would be dictated by the state which is controlled by the people through some form of democracy, or democratically by the workers within each corporation, or both. In both cases what’s produced is dictated by the needs of the majority of the workers in that state. And that’s textbook socialism.

        • SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml
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          3 hours ago

          How to make a cluekess dude read Marx? It’s baffling that we have to answer the same questions again and again.

      • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Capitalism is an exploitation system. It will exploitation what it needs to, to ensure it continues. If that is policies then it will do so. Preventing those without the concept of enough from controlling capital is an an uphill battle. Easier said than done

    • BloodMuffin@lemmy.ca
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      7 hours ago

      you’re a fucking idiot if you think they’re what capitalism means. democracy implies the common man has voting rights. capitalism means that the market determines the value of every product

      • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
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        5 hours ago

        Capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly over the idea of exchanging goods and services. It’s all about accumulation of wealth and will pursue it endlessly because it has no endgame. Union busting; laying off 8,000 employees on leave (Meta); appeasing shareholders over the customers that made them wealthy; burying us all in AI slop.

        • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 hours ago

          Man, the amount of people that think capitalism is a system of money exchange almost seems like one of the major issues somehow, as if people are afraid that they won’t be able to afford things, because there won’t be money. Neglecting that they already can’t afford things, because capitalism is a parasite that kills the host, not because tokens of value can exist outside that perversion.

          • 0ops@piefed.zip
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            7 hours ago

            A free market is often (not necessarily) a characteristic of capitalism, but it’s not what makes a system capitalist. Capitalism is specifically when the means of production (the “capital”) are privately owned (by a single “capitalist” or a group of shareholder capitalists).

            This is opposed to socialism where the working class owns the means of production. Socialism vs capitalism basically comes down to who owns the mills and factories , the people who work there or some fat cat on a yacht somewhere? You can Google it for better explanations than I can give.