I dunno man, billionaires are a big failure of this economic system. So is alienation of labour. No one should profit from someone else’s work. Even so I could forgive all that of it meant everyone had enough money from working say 20 or 30 hours a week, but that isn’t the case.
I know capitalism isn’t purely to blame for the environmental problems we have, but it is a major component. You can see this with oil companies and their owners lobbying governments not to pass legislation, producing propaganda, and funding bad science.
I actually understand some level of how capitalism works already. Maybe I could learn more, but honestly what I have learned already I find disgusting. How anyone who actually understands it doesn’t find it irredeemable I struggle to understand. That being said it’s certainly a complex system, that certainly seems efficient if you don’t actually look too hard. I think that’s what stops people seeing the very obvious flaws.
I don’t consider it bad for people to make a profit off my work though. They’re always risking something in order for me to be in a position to make profits to begin with. If they weren’t I wouldn’t need the employer, I’d just have a risk free business that I’d run myself
I don’t think the oil companies are a failure of capitalism either. I understand how it looks that way, as they do some real sketchy stuff in the name of profit. But at the end of the day our governments should be regulating them to death, but they aren’t and the reason sadly enough is likely that the average citizen simply doesn’t care. In countries where an actual majority of the population care you see much better results Even under full on communism you could still run in to this issue anyway. Oil is a big industry for a reason, it’s really useful and relatively cheap you could easily see a communist society choosing to use it ignoring the downsides
I think capitalism’s flaws are obvious, which I like. Because we can easily rectify them with government regulation Do you have an example of a flaw of capitalism that can’t be solved? Other than just the idea that profiting off someone else’s labour is wrong, as I think that’s really more of a philosophical question that I don’t think 90% of people would agree with
I don’t consider it bad for people to make a profit off my work though. They’re always risking something in order for me to be in a position to make profits to begin with. If they weren’t I wouldn’t need the employer, I’d just have a risk free business that I’d run myself
It’s not just about risk though. It’s about having the capital to start with. Most people would never have enough capital to start a large business like amazon. Even if they did you have to get obscenely lucky and be at the right time on the market. Rich people might technically be taking a risk, but they have the money to finance many, many of these risks and so long as at least some pay off it’s a net profit for them.
Capitalism inevitably leads to government corruption. There is as far as I can tell no easy solution for this besides removing them for the very economic system they are supposed to legislate for - which obviously has other issues. That’s why government regulation doesn’t work and isn’t a solution. As they say: money is the root of all evil.
First you can’t have a communist government do any bad things, because communist governments don’t exist! It’s a contradiction as there is no state under communism. You mean Marxist governments practicing state socialism, and I have already said I have issues with Marxists. I also think it’s pertinent to mention that state socialism is meant to be temporary in a Marxist regime, and not all Marxists advocate for state socialism either.
Market socialism (which isn’t communism - not even close) could theoretically have these issues yes. There are however no billionaires to bribe anyone, so in practice I think these issues would be less severe.
A large part of the problem with the climate issue is public education - that’s why people don’t care. Education is something even state socialist economies have generally done well at. Obviously this can never be done perfectly, and there are always some idiots when it comes to issues like this and things like anti-vaxxers. That being said there is a lot that can be done when people aren’t being brain washed for profit. Conspiracy theorists make bank off of people who are gullible - removing the profit motive there would actually be useful here. I can see it being a problem in an economy under market socialism as the profit motive still exists.
Just on the risk point. To reduce the scope a bit
People not having the assents to start large businesses is of course a thing. You need to be quite lucky to start a business to begin with, I wouldn’t dispute that and I hate the dumb thing the right does where they assume everyone can start a successful business
However I would like to know, in your ideal system where would the starting capital come from? And how do we decide which businesses should have capital allocated to them? Your comment on “communism has no government” would make this seemingly quite difficult
The point is not necessarily about profit rather about what the profit comes from namely the positive (property rights to produced outputs) and negative product (liabilities for used-up inputs), which together are the whole product. A basic tenet of justice that capitalism violates is that legal and de facto responsibility should match. In a worker coop, the workers are held jointly legally responsible for the whole product matching their de facto responsibility for producing it @lemmyshitpost
