Thatcher famously said "the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money", but isn't it the best way to describe billionaires in late stage capitalism?
Go back into the history of capitalism, and every "scare" that capitalists use to maintain the system as is, happens under capitalism. The irony being that most capitalists see the end results of their greed and project it onto other systems.
It's something of a joke to talk about credit expansion in a closed economic loop. Especially when the loop tightens and you end up with...
If I owe you a million dollars and you owe me a million dollars dollars, are we collectively $2M in debt?
We're entirely too zeroed in on the fictitious credit balances and totally divorced from real material conditions. How many labor hours are we spending? How much of our fossil fuel energy reserve have we committed? What is the growth/contraction rate of potable water and arable land?
I don't really give a shit about $40T in IOUs. I care about the actual managed decline of the capital stock. The actual number of skilled laborers in a given profession. The long-term burn-down of natural resources relative to our ability to conserve, recycle, and reproduce them.
Yeah but they are not indebted like a govt like you showed in your first post. I hate how stupid that circular "borrowing" is, but it has nothing to do with usa govt borrowing. NVidia are lending, and can choose to sell it off if/when they want to. The usa govt cannot sell off its debt if that makes sense.
No. They're much worse off, as they don't control their own currency or have sovereignty within their own borders.
I hate how stupid that circular “borrowing” is, but it has nothing to do with usa govt borrowing.
Governments (ostensibly) borrow money to provide economy-growing amenities and economy-preserving hedges against adversity. All of these loans can be described as investments, with an ROI tied back to national GDP growth and liabilities mitigation. The circular debt patterns of these mega-corps have a similar rationale. Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI are effectively partners in a project to create a value-adding service. Their debt is an accounting tool to allocate future profits, not a drag on their economic activity. Just the opposite. Credit expansion allowed a party to bring more natural, capital, and labor resources to bare in a shorter time frame, in order to obtain profits sooner than otherwise.
NVidia are lending, and can choose to sell it off if/when they want to.
To whom?
Nobody else is in the business of producing microprocessors at this scale. NVIDIA extends the loans entirely to incentivize OpenAI to consume more compute, which incentivizes Oracle to build more data centers, which incentivizes NVIDIA to produce more chipsets.
Who else would want this debt? It doesn't serve the same economic end-goal. Who else would have enough currency to assume the debt?
You're right to highlight the decline of tangible assets like skilled labor, value chains and natural resources, but I think you're conflating the circular borrowing (and spending) between tech companies with the US Government's ability to pay back their debts. The tech companies are using circular relationships to inflate their nominal revenue, but the US government actually owes money in a linear fashion. (And as you pointed out, the government has destroyed much of its domestic production capacity for the long term, with energy perhaps being the most worrying resource to have been squandered).
The biggest problem is that the interest on the public debt adds about $1T per year, which means that 19% of all federal revenue (or 39% of individual income taxes) is needed just to pay off the interest.
It is true that the Government could just essentially print money to wipe out their debts to domestic lenders, and that's roughly 3/4 of the money that the government owes. But that would lead to massive inflation, and it leaves approximately $10T in foreign-held debt. Historically, the USA has been able to use the position of the USD as the global reserve currency to offload its inflation on the rest of the world (see how Europe stagnated after the 2008 subprime mortgage crash in the USA, or for that matter look at Japan).
But the USD is now losing its position as the reserve currency. Foreign governments are selling off US treasuries. Foreign pension funds are selling off US stocks. The US is becoming increasingly isolated even to former close allies, and it is no longer seen as a safe place to park money. So if the government tries Quantitative Easing or any similar measure that has worked in the past, that inflation won't be readily absorbed by the US's allies, and it's the US public that will have their investments and pensions wiped.
Like, actual human guards? Wow, right down there on the worst job ever list. As far as crimes go, tried to piss on Thatchers grave is something to frame for posterity. Gonna guess someone got away with it, hence the guards (maybe bribeable?) but thanks for the reality check.
Damn bro we spent all the billionaires money on public works and social security and now we don't have any more billionaires and everyone is better off. What fools we've been.
It's so funny, because only one of those two systems is designed to invest back into itself. The other is a zero sum siphon that perfectly embodies what she described.
China is bringing the developing countries into the 21st Century with it, something that the West refused to do while they had the chance. So it's not overcapacity, it's just that the West isn't the exclusive consumer.
Incidentally, this is why they are pushing so hard for robots/AI to do what they need. Capitalism/money is nothing more than a complicated and thinly veiled facade for the power to make people do what they don't want to do. It is NOTHING more than that
Well, we can just print more money! That's the solution for both capitalism and socialism, works every time.
Don't worry, the predatory bankers that are appointed to the Fed are surely looking out for our best interests, they would never, ever abuse their positions for the benefit of JP Morgan or anything like that, don't be silly
If they just printed it they wouldn't be in debt. The capitalists have successfully introduced a system in which the government has to borrow money from private banks who borrow it from the central bank that prints it. Instead of just printing money, we now print money and pay interest on it to private banks.
Monetary shenanigans only seem like a good idea to people that don't understand economics.
Actual economics is about the value of work. Fluctuations the the value of money don't accomplish much. Consider Cuba which does all kinds of monetary shenanigans. People just do black market money deals to get around it. Capitalism finds a way.
Thatcher was being disingenuous because socialism involves "our money," in which everyone works together for mutual benefit. Capitalism can't function without other people's labor being exploited and under-compensated. I want my taxes to help pay for a portion of things I couldn't afford by myself and for it to benefit others because then I'm not being price gouged by others who are only demanding more because more is being demanded of them by the greediest among us.
They’re already at a point where its basically slavery with extra steps or my go to. How close can we get to slavery without taking everyone’s free will.
Capitalists at that level transform into dictatorial oligarchs. Musk, Bezos, Zuck, Murdoch, and whatever other foreign and domestic counterparts they have…all similar.
You eventually run out of people. People to work in your factories and to consume the products those factories make. If you don't pay a wage people can live on and the people who are working can't consume things then you don't really have an economy except for the military/security apparatus that's required to keep people from revolting. The end result of unchecked wealth and power is an autocracy and those end up failing economically in comparison to democracies. I like the analogy of a black hole. At a certain point too much power is concentrated in the middle and the whole system collapses in on itself instead of shining brightly as a star.
if money disappeared, the workers would still be there, the factories would still be there, there'd still be trucks and ships and oil and houses and crops and whatever else sustains our existence.
you'd think if humans were as smart as they claim they are they'd come up with a solution that doesn't involve paper and credit and oppression.
i think your average person would be totally willing to put in 20 hours a week pumping shit out of septic tanks if they spent the other hours chilling and just doing whatever.
As someone who puts in 40 hours a week in an office job that barely pays enough for me to get by... as long as that septic job pays well enough, sure I'd give it the old college try
The number of things I can tolerate and even enjoy at 20 hours a week is a gigantic, frankly kinda boundless list, while that same question at 40, let alone 60+ hours...that list is tiny.
Really feels like a huge tragedy, to add to all the more direct kinds, the way we destroy our ability to enjoy our time.
No. With socialism, you’re spending other people’s money until you eventually run out and can’t achieve your goals. With capitalism you’re extracting other people’s money and if they’ve run out you arguably achieved your goal
I'm not talking so much about contradictions, as i'm talking about the fact that capitalism in all its morbid glory is somehow still the best we got in practice. I'm not talking anarcho-capitalism of course, and not even whatever tf US got.
When spiced-up with regulations and lefty benefits, it suddenly stops being so bad without the need for revolutions, planned economics and other unnecessary control-freaky fluff stemmed from misunderstanding the core concepts of economics.
If you "can certainly design one that works better", i urge you to do so right now.
Socialism obviously works better than capitalism, and the fact that you're arguing for capitalism in the Late Stage Capitalism comm tells me that you aren't here in good faith.
i'm here because i don't like to sit in an echo-chamber, preferring to trial my views in a dialectic process of discussion:)
Also, this comm kinda mainly relates to US when it needs to dunk on capitalism, which kinda tells more about US and its inbred political system, than it is telling about capitalism itself.
Now, how about you elaborate, telling exactly how socialism would work better than a capitalistic system with all the regulations and welfare would, rather than giving me a non-answer?
I can’t give you an entire education on political economy and socialist history in one comment. At the very least, socialism works towards solving the conflict that arises when one class of people do all the labour while another class reaps the profits, as occurs in the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production. This conflict is the main source of misery in the world today- war, starvation, deaths from preventable disease, climate change/ecological collapse etc. are all inevitable under capitalism because of the profit motive. Those things can all happen under socialism, but the system itself doesn’t incentivize them.
I can’t give you an entire education on political economy and socialist history in one comment.
well, good thing you can't, because that would be graphomania, not a concrete answer to my question.
At the very least, socialism works towards solving the conflict that arises when one class of people do all the labour while another class reaps the profits [...]
Still nothing a good ol' law regulation or two can't fix... Without the need for a regime change.
Hell, let's imagine we live in the dreamland, where your average worker earns more-less same as their manager, or, better yet, ceo or even the business founder. Now riddle me this: who'd found the business in the first place? Who'd take the risks if reward is practically nonexistent?
I already hear you saying "we don't need no private enterprise!". I won't even talk about how the product diversity is a very good thing to have, because even if we don't account for that, there's still a new problem, two even. Namely, corruption and enshittification. When everything is centralized, and every enterprise is basically a government-mandated monopoly, those two become very prominent. So prominent, in fact, that by the sheer force of inheritance the post-USSR countries are still more corrupt than their western neighbours. Decentralization is the single most effective method to fight it.
Enshittification? We live in the world where we live, i bet you know how monopolies tied to that word. Thanks to the previous "power word", present in any highly-centralized government, no regulation would prevent it, only make it more creative in some cases.
This conflict is the main source of misery in the world today- war, starvation, deaths from preventable disease, climate change/ecological collapse etc. are all inevitable under capitalism [...]
You count starvation as one of the sources of misery of a modern human? You're either mindlessly quoting a 200yo book, or you live in one of not so many countries that still have problems with food. Newsflash, but starvation is not an issue for the majority of people in the 21st century, and, dare i say, there's no correlation between starvation and capitalism, considering that the entirety of US, EU and pleades of other capitalistic countris haven't known the taste of starvation for a very long time. According to the world resource institute 30-40% of the food produced in the world goes to waste. Any modern convenience store has a wider assortment of food than our ancestors have ever dreamed of. It's almost as if since Carl Marx wrote Das Kapital, the food production had been solved by automatization and advancements in chemistry and biology.
Preventable diseases? Well, technically all diseases can be called preventable, at least medical studies try their best for this statement to be as close to reality as possible, so i'd like you to give me examples of what you consider a "preventable disease", specifically, a preventable disease people systematically die of in all, or at least the majority of capitalist countries specifically due to capitalism-related issues. Because, as i said, if there's one outlier like US, it doesn't paint capitalism as a bad paradigm, it paints US as a deeply problematic country with fucked-up laws.
Next, the ecological issues. It sure is a challenge for humanity to solve, but i won't say it makes us miserable right now. What kind of problems capitalism has with ecology that socialism is guaranteed to solve, or at least "doesn't incentivize"? You think once socialism is established there'd be no schizo-politicians and climate change deniers? Or that a highly-centralized system isn't a fertile soil for lobbying and greenwashing?
And finally, war. There's an old saying. Something about wars ceasing only when there'd be a single person left alive or something. Do i really have to elaborate?
[...] because of the profit motive.
Except socialism doesn't get rid of the profit motive. It just moves it from per-enterprise to global economy scale, i.e. it practically turns whole country into a single gargantuan enterprise working for its profit.
Those things can all happen under socialism, but the system itself doesn’t incentivize them.
I tend to disagree. Check my previous paragraph to get the reason.
To summarize what i'm saying, everything is a poison if the dose is wrong. I think the path to the least shitty system lies through gradual changes of the existing system in response to the immediate concerns
The problem with late stage capitalism, if you ask me, isn't with capitalism, it's with the government
McDonalds charges $7 a hamburger. Capitalism says that if I can make a better hamburger for cheaper, I should. This will force companies to compete keeping quality high and prices low.
The problem is that while I theoretically can make a better hamburger and sell it to you for a dollar, I'm not legally allowed to make a better hamburger and sell it to you for a dollar
I have to get a business license, permits, a kitchen, a place of business, health inspections, etc.... and by the time I get all of this in order I had to take out a small business loan and now I find myself $12k in debt and I have a $3k rent payment due on my kitchen every month and I need to make enough money to pay my own bills at home
I'm so over my head in debt that I can no longer afford to sell my hamburgers for a dollar. I just can't sell enough hamburgers to make enough money to pay off my loans and cover the bills for both my business and my home. I actually sell less hamburgers than McDonalds so now my burgers have to cost $12 or I go broke
So some companies now have a stranglehold on the market. They are so large with so much money they can make worse products and charge more for them because they no longer have any real competition.
So yeah, I could make a bomb ass TV that doesn't come with a bunch of spy devices and advertisements and sell to you for half the price... but the government won't let me
Capitalism isn't the real problem, it's the government
But it's a tricky beast. I mean, don't you like knowing that the kitchen of the place you just ate it isn't full of roaches? Health inspections aren't exactly bad.
So what you need is a government that encourages small business; which is what republicans claim they want to do but never actually do
So yeah, you definitely want socialist programs like health care but when it comes to products you want capitalism, you just want real capitalism. You want the government to hate large corporations as much as you do.
The government should be begging me to make hamburgers and TVs
The debt you describe is due to capitalism. Buying kitchen equipment, leasing commercial land, buying food and supplies, etc. None of that has anything to do with the government.
If you can sell something cheaper, you should? What the fuck is that? Why? You figure out volume and margin and land where you want to be. If people are more than willing to pay five bucks for a hamburger, why sell it for a dollar? If everyone else is selling them for eight bucks and your business is slow due to competition, maybe you lower the price and reduce your margin, but you would go $7.50 or something, right? You wouldn't want to go lower than you have to. Most things are priced at what the market will bear. Maximum profit. Right?
This is where it gets complicated. In theory I could just wheel out my grill to the side of the street, cook up a burger, and sell it to someone walking by for a dollar. If I could do that McDonalds would have some real competition because I could just set up my grill about 10 feet from their parking lot.
No loans, no rent, no permits, no nothing. I don't need to buy a kitchen or pay rent on a building and so I don't need any kind of business loan. I just go to the grocery store, buy some buns and some hamburger meat, and start slinging burgers
But in reality the government absolutely will not let me just wheel a grill out onto the sidewalk and start selling hamburgers
Is that bad? Kind of, but also no. It's good to know that the food you buy from other people came from a clean kitchen and was cooked to some kind of safe standard. However, all of those safety regulations comes at a cost; and that cost is quickly becoming the death of small business which in turn is killing competition which is what makes capitalism good
I'll sell my hamburgers for a dollar because I'm not incredibly greedy and at that price I could probably sell enough of them to make enough money to make me happy. I don't need a yacht. You're apparently incredibly greedy which makes you shit at business. Well, it should. What you want to do is gouge people. You want to give them shit fucking burgers at high prices. But because I'm not a greedy piece of shit, you can't be either. Your $7.50 hamburger business is really going to struggle in a world full of people selling them for a buck.
This is good for consumers because now you have to make a better burger. So quality is high and prices are low
But that's not how it is anymore. Which is why quality is low and prices are through the roof. It's not capitalism that made the world shit, it was the government when they stopped catering to small business and instead focused on pleasing corporations
People do this. You can also get a permit to do this. That is much cheaper than leasing a restaurant and equipping/staffing it. But the restaurant is where the money is and you know it.
You're right, I can do it... if I get all of the permits and inspections
What I can't do is just take the grill I already own, wheel it out to any public place, and start selling burgers
Which means if I want to compete with McDonalds I need permits, licenses, health inspections, a place I can rent to sell at, taxes, proper disposal of waste, etc...
And this adds up. It adds up to a point where I probably don't have the cash on hand to just do it so I need a loan and paying for all of that month after month means I need to charge more for my burgers; or I just simply can't do it
I can't just sell hot dogs on any corner in New York City. While the permits are pretty cheap, they only allow so many of them. So what stopping me from setting up a cart 2 feet away and selling hot dogs for $2 less? The government. I'm literally not allowed to sell hot dogs 2 feet away from that guy. I'm not allowed to sell hot dogs on any street
So what's stopping me from selling you a burger for a buck? The government
Is that bad? Not necessarily. It is nice knowing that the food that I buy is cooked well and not in a kitchen full of cockroaches.
And when it comes to NYC it's nice knowing your street isn't literally lined end-to-end with hot dog carts. But you need the government to make sure they dish out permits for street corners fairly. If the government gives every corner in a 3 mile radius to Nathan's Hot Dogs then Hot Dogs now cost $7 and there's nothing you can do about it
So it's good the government regulates this stuff... however, a government that caters to corporations over small business is a big problem. Doing so kills off real competition leaving you only a handful of mega-corporations that have a stranglehold on the market allowing them to make shitter products and charge more money because, "what are you going to do about it?"
78 Comments
rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 120 pts · 3d
Thatcher said that with 0 irony as she defunded public hospitals to get replaced by charity from rich child rapist Jimmy Sevile
Shindo66@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 3d
Don't worry, Jim will fix it.
ragepaw@lemmy.ca · 90 pts · 3d
Go back into the history of capitalism, and every "scare" that capitalists use to maintain the system as is, happens under capitalism. The irony being that most capitalists see the end results of their greed and project it onto other systems.
Every accusation is an admission.
SaltyAmerican@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 3d
The people that say this live in a country that's $40t in debt
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 66 pts · 3d
That famously American Margaret Thatcher
Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works · 20 pts · 3d
It's happening everywhere, even if Americans seem to believe only America exists lol
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 1d
Yes, distant cousin to the american patriot Marie Antoinette
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 3d
In debt to whom?
It's something of a joke to talk about credit expansion in a closed economic loop. Especially when the loop tightens and you end up with...
If I owe you a million dollars and you owe me a million dollars dollars, are we collectively $2M in debt?
We're entirely too zeroed in on the fictitious credit balances and totally divorced from real material conditions. How many labor hours are we spending? How much of our fossil fuel energy reserve have we committed? What is the growth/contraction rate of potable water and arable land?
I don't really give a shit about $40T in IOUs. I care about the actual managed decline of the capital stock. The actual number of skilled laborers in a given profession. The long-term burn-down of natural resources relative to our ability to conserve, recycle, and reproduce them.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 3d
They talk about the government debt, not nvidia or something.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 3d
NVIDIA alone bolds $191B in US treasuries. So that's money the US effectively owes NVIDIA.
What do we want to bet NVIDIA's tax liabilities are for this year?
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 3d
Yeah but they are not indebted like a govt like you showed in your first post. I hate how stupid that circular "borrowing" is, but it has nothing to do with usa govt borrowing. NVidia are lending, and can choose to sell it off if/when they want to. The usa govt cannot sell off its debt if that makes sense.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
No. They're much worse off, as they don't control their own currency or have sovereignty within their own borders.
Governments (ostensibly) borrow money to provide economy-growing amenities and economy-preserving hedges against adversity. All of these loans can be described as investments, with an ROI tied back to national GDP growth and liabilities mitigation. The circular debt patterns of these mega-corps have a similar rationale. Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI are effectively partners in a project to create a value-adding service. Their debt is an accounting tool to allocate future profits, not a drag on their economic activity. Just the opposite. Credit expansion allowed a party to bring more natural, capital, and labor resources to bare in a shorter time frame, in order to obtain profits sooner than otherwise.
To whom?
Nobody else is in the business of producing microprocessors at this scale. NVIDIA extends the loans entirely to incentivize OpenAI to consume more compute, which incentivizes Oracle to build more data centers, which incentivizes NVIDIA to produce more chipsets.
Who else would want this debt? It doesn't serve the same economic end-goal. Who else would have enough currency to assume the debt?
mirshafie@europe.pub · 4 pts · 3d
You're right to highlight the decline of tangible assets like skilled labor, value chains and natural resources, but I think you're conflating the circular borrowing (and spending) between tech companies with the US Government's ability to pay back their debts. The tech companies are using circular relationships to inflate their nominal revenue, but the US government actually owes money in a linear fashion. (And as you pointed out, the government has destroyed much of its domestic production capacity for the long term, with energy perhaps being the most worrying resource to have been squandered).
The biggest problem is that the interest on the public debt adds about $1T per year, which means that 19% of all federal revenue (or 39% of individual income taxes) is needed just to pay off the interest.
It is true that the Government could just essentially print money to wipe out their debts to domestic lenders, and that's roughly 3/4 of the money that the government owes. But that would lead to massive inflation, and it leaves approximately $10T in foreign-held debt. Historically, the USA has been able to use the position of the USD as the global reserve currency to offload its inflation on the rest of the world (see how Europe stagnated after the 2008 subprime mortgage crash in the USA, or for that matter look at Japan).
But the USD is now losing its position as the reserve currency. Foreign governments are selling off US treasuries. Foreign pension funds are selling off US stocks. The US is becoming increasingly isolated even to former close allies, and it is no longer seen as a safe place to park money. So if the government tries Quantitative Easing or any similar measure that has worked in the past, that inflation won't be readily absorbed by the US's allies, and it's the US public that will have their investments and pensions wiped.
weps@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
debt to blackrock, vanguard, china, Japan and US citizens mostly
SabinStargem@lemmy.today · 40 pts · 3d
Thatcher, like any capitalist dickhead, is a liar and malignant.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net · 14 pts · 3d
If you're English you can literaly go piss on her grave.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 2d
Sadly it's guarded and cameras
People tried, they got arrested
Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 2d
I vote that we create the Thatcher Urinary Fund to pay for the defense of people who go urinate on her grave.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 2d
Yes! We should!
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net · 4 pts · 2d
Like, actual human guards? Wow, right down there on the worst job ever list. As far as crimes go, tried to piss on Thatchers grave is something to frame for posterity. Gonna guess someone got away with it, hence the guards (maybe bribeable?) but thanks for the reality check.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 2d
Specifically it's cause she's buried in a convent graveyard
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 2d
Hmmfh, in what way was she a nun? But thanks for the info.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 2d
You don't have to be a nun to get buried in one, it turns out, just have to know people in power.
But also turns out that I was misremembering, she got buried in the grounds of a WAR VETERAN Hospital - Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 2d
If a bunch of teens can speed run through Scientology buildings and Naruto run through area 51...
What I'm trying to say is I think it's a lack of motivation
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2d
They check your nationality at admission?
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2d
Or if you're there on vacation
Flamekebab@piefed.social · 11 pts · 2d
Was. Thankfully.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
Was, thankfully.
Fleur_@aussie.zone · 38 pts · 3d
Damn bro we spent all the billionaires money on public works and social security and now we don't have any more billionaires and everyone is better off. What fools we've been.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 3d
It's so funny, because only one of those two systems is designed to invest back into itself. The other is a zero sum siphon that perfectly embodies what she described.
Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 3d
Exactly. When I thought of it (not in the shower lol), I was like waiiiiit.....
Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works · 26 pts · 3d
Yes, and that has already happened. That is why the richest have switched to the source of all money: The government.
HeartyOfGlass@piefed.social · 21 pts · 2d
Isn't Capitalism just Socialism for billionaires?
AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml · 14 pts · 3d
Neoliberalism has destroyed demand. At long last it's finally done. Now they are complaining about China's overcapacity.
mirshafie@europe.pub · 6 pts · 3d
China is bringing the developing countries into the 21st Century with it, something that the West refused to do while they had the chance. So it's not overcapacity, it's just that the West isn't the exclusive consumer.
dregan@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 3d
"eventually you run out of other people"
Incidentally, this is why they are pushing so hard for robots/AI to do what they need. Capitalism/money is nothing more than a complicated and thinly veiled facade for the power to make people do what they don't want to do. It is NOTHING more than that
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d
Well, we can just print more money! That's the solution for both capitalism and socialism, works every time.
Don't worry, the predatory bankers that are appointed to the Fed are surely looking out for our best interests, they would never, ever abuse their positions for the benefit of JP Morgan or anything like that, don't be silly
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 2d
That's how America is now currently $40 trillion in debt! Just shut up and keep printing!
Don_alForno@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1d
If they just printed it they wouldn't be in debt. The capitalists have successfully introduced a system in which the government has to borrow money from private banks who borrow it from the central bank that prints it. Instead of just printing money, we now print money and pay interest on it to private banks.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2d
Monetary shenanigans only seem like a good idea to people that don't understand economics.
Actual economics is about the value of work. Fluctuations the the value of money don't accomplish much. Consider Cuba which does all kinds of monetary shenanigans. People just do black market money deals to get around it. Capitalism finds a way.
DMck@lemmy.world · -14 pts · 2d
Well Elon Musk's companies directly employ roughly 150,000 to 160,000 people globally, Who do you employ?
quarkquasar@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
one_old_coder@piefed.social · 5 pts · 1d
His money comes from his parents and the government. Also he is a nazi, your argument is invalid.
ajoebyanyothername@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
And all the money will start trickling down any day now!
henchmannumber3@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2d
Thatcher was being disingenuous because socialism involves "our money," in which everyone works together for mutual benefit. Capitalism can't function without other people's labor being exploited and under-compensated. I want my taxes to help pay for a portion of things I couldn't afford by myself and for it to benefit others because then I'm not being price gouged by others who are only demanding more because more is being demanded of them by the greediest among us.
jtrek@startrek.website · 8 pts · 3d
I mean, capitalists seem like they would be happy to just have slaves and all the nice things for themselves.
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
They’re already at a point where its basically slavery with extra steps or my go to. How close can we get to slavery without taking everyone’s free will.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 3d
I would even remove the conditional there.
They currently own common folk more than people who actually legally owned other people.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Capitalists at that level transform into dictatorial oligarchs. Musk, Bezos, Zuck, Murdoch, and whatever other foreign and domestic counterparts they have…all similar.
moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com · 7 pts · 3d
Spiderman pointing at spiderman dot jpeg
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 3d
Narcissists project
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
This less famously led to the saying 'The problem with conservatism is you eventually run out of other peoples stuff to sell'
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
You eventually run out of people. People to work in your factories and to consume the products those factories make. If you don't pay a wage people can live on and the people who are working can't consume things then you don't really have an economy except for the military/security apparatus that's required to keep people from revolting. The end result of unchecked wealth and power is an autocracy and those end up failing economically in comparison to democracies. I like the analogy of a black hole. At a certain point too much power is concentrated in the middle and the whole system collapses in on itself instead of shining brightly as a star.
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1d
AI will solve all of that for a fraction of the cost!
/S
whereitsat@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 2d
why do you need money?
if money disappeared, the workers would still be there, the factories would still be there, there'd still be trucks and ships and oil and houses and crops and whatever else sustains our existence.
you'd think if humans were as smart as they claim they are they'd come up with a solution that doesn't involve paper and credit and oppression.
i think your average person would be totally willing to put in 20 hours a week pumping shit out of septic tanks if they spent the other hours chilling and just doing whatever.
TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
As someone who puts in 40 hours a week in an office job that barely pays enough for me to get by... as long as that septic job pays well enough, sure I'd give it the old college try
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 2d
The number of things I can tolerate and even enjoy at 20 hours a week is a gigantic, frankly kinda boundless list, while that same question at 40, let alone 60+ hours...that list is tiny.
Really feels like a huge tragedy, to add to all the more direct kinds, the way we destroy our ability to enjoy our time.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
There recently was an article in The Street about multinationals complaining about people not having enough money to spend on their products.
So basically, Capitalism is running out of peoples money right now.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1d
a thatcher thread? obligatory only queen i recognise video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUlj48Rvp1c
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Yes, its about time the billionaires money was spent on socialism until it runs out.
A K shaped economy is a broken economy.
The top of that K is all the money that should have been spent in the middle and the bottom, but was hoarded instead.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 3d
It is and we are reaching it. We cannot longer keep paying all that capital gain.
Most of the cost of any product are capital gains nowadays.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 3d
Didn't Liz Truss actually were the one managing to run out of UK people's money?
Erna_muse@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1d
it's a symptom of consolidation of power.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 1d
Uggg... I hate this nostradamus ass term. It's condescending and idiotic at the same time.
AA5B@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
No. With socialism, you’re spending other people’s money until you eventually run out and can’t achieve your goals. With capitalism you’re extracting other people’s money and if they’ve run out you arguably achieved your goal
Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
Only one of those has the money recirculating.
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org · -3 pts · 1d
Which just shows that we can't really design a good system that'll actually work
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
We can certainly design one that works better, but yes, every system will have contradictions that need to be overcome.
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org · -2 pts · 1d
I'm not talking so much about contradictions, as i'm talking about the fact that capitalism in all its morbid glory is somehow still the best we got in practice. I'm not talking anarcho-capitalism of course, and not even whatever tf US got.
When spiced-up with regulations and lefty benefits, it suddenly stops being so bad without the need for revolutions, planned economics and other unnecessary control-freaky fluff stemmed from misunderstanding the core concepts of economics.
If you "can certainly design one that works better", i urge you to do so right now.
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Socialism obviously works better than capitalism, and the fact that you're arguing for capitalism in the Late Stage Capitalism comm tells me that you aren't here in good faith.
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org · -1 pts · 1d
i'm here because i don't like to sit in an echo-chamber, preferring to trial my views in a dialectic process of discussion:)
Also, this comm kinda mainly relates to US when it needs to dunk on capitalism, which kinda tells more about US and its inbred political system, than it is telling about capitalism itself.
Now, how about you elaborate, telling exactly how socialism would work better than a capitalistic system with all the regulations and welfare would, rather than giving me a non-answer?
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I can’t give you an entire education on political economy and socialist history in one comment. At the very least, socialism works towards solving the conflict that arises when one class of people do all the labour while another class reaps the profits, as occurs in the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production. This conflict is the main source of misery in the world today- war, starvation, deaths from preventable disease, climate change/ecological collapse etc. are all inevitable under capitalism because of the profit motive. Those things can all happen under socialism, but the system itself doesn’t incentivize them.
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org · -2 pts · 1d
well, good thing you can't, because that would be graphomania, not a concrete answer to my question.
Still nothing a good ol' law regulation or two can't fix... Without the need for a regime change.
Hell, let's imagine we live in the dreamland, where your average worker earns more-less same as their manager, or, better yet, ceo or even the business founder. Now riddle me this: who'd found the business in the first place? Who'd take the risks if reward is practically nonexistent?
I already hear you saying "we don't need no private enterprise!". I won't even talk about how the product diversity is a very good thing to have, because even if we don't account for that, there's still a new problem, two even. Namely, corruption and enshittification. When everything is centralized, and every enterprise is basically a government-mandated monopoly, those two become very prominent. So prominent, in fact, that by the sheer force of inheritance the post-USSR countries are still more corrupt than their western neighbours. Decentralization is the single most effective method to fight it.
Enshittification? We live in the world where we live, i bet you know how monopolies tied to that word. Thanks to the previous "power word", present in any highly-centralized government, no regulation would prevent it, only make it more creative in some cases.
You count starvation as one of the sources of misery of a modern human? You're either mindlessly quoting a 200yo book, or you live in one of not so many countries that still have problems with food. Newsflash, but starvation is not an issue for the majority of people in the 21st century, and, dare i say, there's no correlation between starvation and capitalism, considering that the entirety of US, EU and pleades of other capitalistic countris haven't known the taste of starvation for a very long time. According to the world resource institute 30-40% of the food produced in the world goes to waste. Any modern convenience store has a wider assortment of food than our ancestors have ever dreamed of. It's almost as if since Carl Marx wrote Das Kapital, the food production had been solved by automatization and advancements in chemistry and biology.
Preventable diseases? Well, technically all diseases can be called preventable, at least medical studies try their best for this statement to be as close to reality as possible, so i'd like you to give me examples of what you consider a "preventable disease", specifically, a preventable disease people systematically die of in all, or at least the majority of capitalist countries specifically due to capitalism-related issues. Because, as i said, if there's one outlier like US, it doesn't paint capitalism as a bad paradigm, it paints US as a deeply problematic country with fucked-up laws.
Next, the ecological issues. It sure is a challenge for humanity to solve, but i won't say it makes us miserable right now. What kind of problems capitalism has with ecology that socialism is guaranteed to solve, or at least "doesn't incentivize"? You think once socialism is established there'd be no schizo-politicians and climate change deniers? Or that a highly-centralized system isn't a fertile soil for lobbying and greenwashing?
And finally, war. There's an old saying. Something about wars ceasing only when there'd be a single person left alive or something. Do i really have to elaborate?
Except socialism doesn't get rid of the profit motive. It just moves it from per-enterprise to global economy scale, i.e. it practically turns whole country into a single gargantuan enterprise working for its profit.
I tend to disagree. Check my previous paragraph to get the reason.
To summarize what i'm saying, everything is a poison if the dose is wrong. I think the path to the least shitty system lies through gradual changes of the existing system in response to the immediate concerns
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world · -12 pts · 3d
The difference is that centrally planned socialist economy can't produce jack shit
VelvetPinkOtter123@lemmy.world · -16 pts · 3d
It can be both
The problem with late stage capitalism, if you ask me, isn't with capitalism, it's with the government
McDonalds charges $7 a hamburger. Capitalism says that if I can make a better hamburger for cheaper, I should. This will force companies to compete keeping quality high and prices low.
The problem is that while I theoretically can make a better hamburger and sell it to you for a dollar, I'm not legally allowed to make a better hamburger and sell it to you for a dollar
I have to get a business license, permits, a kitchen, a place of business, health inspections, etc.... and by the time I get all of this in order I had to take out a small business loan and now I find myself $12k in debt and I have a $3k rent payment due on my kitchen every month and I need to make enough money to pay my own bills at home
I'm so over my head in debt that I can no longer afford to sell my hamburgers for a dollar. I just can't sell enough hamburgers to make enough money to pay off my loans and cover the bills for both my business and my home. I actually sell less hamburgers than McDonalds so now my burgers have to cost $12 or I go broke
So some companies now have a stranglehold on the market. They are so large with so much money they can make worse products and charge more for them because they no longer have any real competition.
So yeah, I could make a bomb ass TV that doesn't come with a bunch of spy devices and advertisements and sell to you for half the price... but the government won't let me
Capitalism isn't the real problem, it's the government
But it's a tricky beast. I mean, don't you like knowing that the kitchen of the place you just ate it isn't full of roaches? Health inspections aren't exactly bad.
So what you need is a government that encourages small business; which is what republicans claim they want to do but never actually do
So yeah, you definitely want socialist programs like health care but when it comes to products you want capitalism, you just want real capitalism. You want the government to hate large corporations as much as you do.
The government should be begging me to make hamburgers and TVs
Major_Tsiom@fedia.io · 8 pts · 3d
The debt you describe is due to capitalism. Buying kitchen equipment, leasing commercial land, buying food and supplies, etc. None of that has anything to do with the government.
If you can sell something cheaper, you should? What the fuck is that? Why? You figure out volume and margin and land where you want to be. If people are more than willing to pay five bucks for a hamburger, why sell it for a dollar? If everyone else is selling them for eight bucks and your business is slow due to competition, maybe you lower the price and reduce your margin, but you would go $7.50 or something, right? You wouldn't want to go lower than you have to. Most things are priced at what the market will bear. Maximum profit. Right?
VelvetPinkOtter123@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 3d
This is where it gets complicated. In theory I could just wheel out my grill to the side of the street, cook up a burger, and sell it to someone walking by for a dollar. If I could do that McDonalds would have some real competition because I could just set up my grill about 10 feet from their parking lot.
No loans, no rent, no permits, no nothing. I don't need to buy a kitchen or pay rent on a building and so I don't need any kind of business loan. I just go to the grocery store, buy some buns and some hamburger meat, and start slinging burgers
But in reality the government absolutely will not let me just wheel a grill out onto the sidewalk and start selling hamburgers
Is that bad? Kind of, but also no. It's good to know that the food you buy from other people came from a clean kitchen and was cooked to some kind of safe standard. However, all of those safety regulations comes at a cost; and that cost is quickly becoming the death of small business which in turn is killing competition which is what makes capitalism good
I'll sell my hamburgers for a dollar because I'm not incredibly greedy and at that price I could probably sell enough of them to make enough money to make me happy. I don't need a yacht. You're apparently incredibly greedy which makes you shit at business. Well, it should. What you want to do is gouge people. You want to give them shit fucking burgers at high prices. But because I'm not a greedy piece of shit, you can't be either. Your $7.50 hamburger business is really going to struggle in a world full of people selling them for a buck.
This is good for consumers because now you have to make a better burger. So quality is high and prices are low
But that's not how it is anymore. Which is why quality is low and prices are through the roof. It's not capitalism that made the world shit, it was the government when they stopped catering to small business and instead focused on pleasing corporations
Major_Tsiom@fedia.io · 5 pts · 3d
People do this. You can also get a permit to do this. That is much cheaper than leasing a restaurant and equipping/staffing it. But the restaurant is where the money is and you know it.
VelvetPinkOtter123@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 3d
You're right, I can do it... if I get all of the permits and inspections
What I can't do is just take the grill I already own, wheel it out to any public place, and start selling burgers
Which means if I want to compete with McDonalds I need permits, licenses, health inspections, a place I can rent to sell at, taxes, proper disposal of waste, etc...
And this adds up. It adds up to a point where I probably don't have the cash on hand to just do it so I need a loan and paying for all of that month after month means I need to charge more for my burgers; or I just simply can't do it
I can't just sell hot dogs on any corner in New York City. While the permits are pretty cheap, they only allow so many of them. So what stopping me from setting up a cart 2 feet away and selling hot dogs for $2 less? The government. I'm literally not allowed to sell hot dogs 2 feet away from that guy. I'm not allowed to sell hot dogs on any street
So what's stopping me from selling you a burger for a buck? The government
Is that bad? Not necessarily. It is nice knowing that the food that I buy is cooked well and not in a kitchen full of cockroaches.
And when it comes to NYC it's nice knowing your street isn't literally lined end-to-end with hot dog carts. But you need the government to make sure they dish out permits for street corners fairly. If the government gives every corner in a 3 mile radius to Nathan's Hot Dogs then Hot Dogs now cost $7 and there's nothing you can do about it
So it's good the government regulates this stuff... however, a government that caters to corporations over small business is a big problem. Doing so kills off real competition leaving you only a handful of mega-corporations that have a stranglehold on the market allowing them to make shitter products and charge more money because, "what are you going to do about it?"