Capitalism must be mitigated

It's right there in Wealth of Nations, the work largely recognized as inventing modern capitalism.

Why does the right ignore this in favor of the garbage fiction of Atlas Shrugged?

Yeah, it really does.

I know I play a socialist on here (and I am one, to an extent), but the lovely thing about being a free-thinking person is you don't have to lock yourself into a false dichotomy of "if you're A, then you can't be B".

I can believe in the benefits of socialism, and still subscribe to capitalistic beliefs. It's nice! I wish my fellow Americans (and corporations of the world) would adopt this stance instead of thinking that if they're not a diehard capitalist then they're a filthy communist.

My immediate wishes?

• Undo Citizens United
• Make certain industries non-profit, specifically (if you think this is crazy, most of the below were non-profit prior to Reagan which, surprise surprise, is also when things kind of started declining...):
  • Utilities
  • Insurance
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • College and universities.
• Term limits for Congress and Supreme Court
• Elections are paid for by taxpayers, and taxpayers only! Candidates all get a small and equal sum and are allowed NO OTHER MONEY. They get a website hosted by the US Taxpayers, they get one TV spot for 15 minutes each week, and the election cycle goes for 45 days and that's it.
• Cut defense spending by about 15% and fund education and public works.
• Instate some sort of mandatory social service system for high school grads; you get out of high school and/or turn 18, and you have to do one of the following:
  • Join the military
  • Join a public works program
  • Join some government agency (diplomatic corps, foreign aid, etc)
• No college until you're done with the above social service thing; sorry, folks, you gotta work for the greater good and learn some skills and gain some life experience before you go to adult daycare and then straight to a job you don't know you want or not for the next 30 years.
• And last but not least: make billionaires illegal!

Sincerely,

Comrade Bojangles

Gamespot Politbureau Chief.

@mrbojangles25: You got my vote!👍

Thanks!

You can donate to my campaign at---

---dammit, broke the rules!

I was in college at 17. A few make it there, sooner. Could be complicated.

Yeah, I meant "thereabouts", not exactly 18. Maybe "after high school or equivalent" would be the way to go?

My freshman year roommate was in college at 17, too. Was in juvenile hall the week before haha. Interesting dude. He, like many, was also not ready for college.

Too many people treat college like a trade school and it's not. There may be some issues with college structure and cost, but for those able and willing there's a great education on offer.

Capitalism by necessity needs extreme regulation or it will inevitably become feudalism. My evidence is look at the world.

It definitely has to be.

In in line with their thinking as well, though I'd like to add:

• Fund the arts! A lot of entertainment is bad, and it's because people don't want to find the arts. If you want good writers and artists, you gotta major in the arts.
• Helping other countries: I don't believe that some countries should be wealthy, while others live in poverty. That isn't right. I don't believe in direct interference though. I believe that we should empower the people of the country, because they know what they need better than we do.
• Clean energy: climate change is real. We should find more businesses that believe in recycling. Incentivize people to recycle, by paying them when they do. Even someone as simple as, a pound of recycled water bottles will yield a certain amount of money.
• Expand welfare and housing: people need homes and they need to eat.

I do think capitalism has a place, at least certain aspects. Though there is also a place for socialist programs.

Yes!

People think of clean energy as part of the "liberal agenda" but they don't realize there is huge money to be made with it. It could be the next big thing. Tons of labor and craft jobs--manufacturing, welding, electrician work, plumbing, etc--not to mention it could really kickstart a new American manufacturing boom.

There is no reason we can't make boatloads of cash and make the world a better place. We just need to get away from this nonsense culture war

I also think it would be a really great way for America to demonstrate it still has leadership abilities in the world, instead of running away from the world like we are now.

Literally what is happening now. The middle class is disappearing, pretty soon it's going to be a huge amount of lowly serfs with a buffer of "white collar" jobs in golden handcuffs between the uber-rich.

I'm waiting for the airline industry to be deregulated (again). Airplane crashes are trending and I promise you Musk and Trump are going to be like "Well the government isn't doing a good job regulating so I think maybe they should regulate themselves" and people don't realize how much worse airline travel was (and how unaffordable it was) prior to air travel.

My mom worked for an airline in the 70's and came from a family that worked in airlines; she says it was super fancy back in the day but when I ask her if it was better she says "hell no" lol.

Education, affordable housing, access to healthcare, infrastructure, preventing excessive regional economic disparities, ensuring small businesses are easy to to set up and develop. Probably good to prioritise those, if only for the purposes of access to a semblance of social mobility, in most societies. Greater wealth-extraction rights for the most powerful? Eh, it's not top of my list.

I also don't know how much I buy into the idea that freedom and security are fundamentally opposed.

I agree, Capitalism should be curtailed by social responsabilities and ethics. The profit can not come at the expense of others suffering or worsening of climate. There must be balance in everything. The profit and enrichment should not be the goal, but the means of social, intellectual and cultural uplifting. Corporation power must be kept in check and controlled by society. Everyone should be equal before the law regardless of their economical status. The rich must be held accountable for their crimes the same way the poor does. But unfortunately in our societies, the balance of power is tipped towards the rich. We become their servants rather than equal members of society. The rich very frequently become the dictator rather than a productive member of society.

Adam Smith himself discusses this in Wealth of Nations. I don't understand how this aspect of his work has been so easily forgotten/overlooked.

Question for you all: Did you have to read Wealth of Nations in school? It was required reading in our Economics class.

We didn't have economics at all in school. :( I know, sounds crazy, right?

I never got around to reading Smith. Kind of always figured it's relative to your cultural conditions, what ends up being prioritised:

When you've got plentiful resources and low population density, you'll tend to prioritise liberty; when resources are scarce and population density's high, you'll likely prioritise utility distribution.

There's always a balance to be had, but you've got to regulate, to prevent exploitation and offset the inevitable effects of corruption and collusion. I mean, you're for sure not free if you can't eat or afford shelter. The absolutists are wacko, in my book.

Yeah it does seriously wtf? That wasn't even an elective course for us, it was mandatory to graduate.

Maybe it was there as an optional subject, I don't remember now. Shame because it would have really helped in my career, twenty years down the line. On the plus side, we did have one of the finest philosophy teachers in the country, so my mind would have been made up anyway.

It's all part of their half-century effort to discount education and experts in favor of ideologues on (currently) tiktok and YouTube. They believe it because they were told to believe it.

These are people of the land. The common clay of the new right wing media.

Capitalism is the best system we got. The problem is democracy and freedom, and how it makes people weak pathetic fat losers. We got too many entitled people who believe they're owed something, the entire nation is like that. They feel like they're owed money, owed some pension, owed some respect, or some other bs. Its the reason why the Chinese are kicking our ass, and why Trump has to place tarrifs on them to keep them down, because our people are weak. We got way too much socialism going on thats corrupting our capitalism. Corporations getting socialist benefits, too big to fail, the pensioners, the unions, and the list goes on and on, people not taking care of their healths, not giving a shit about the environment. The problem isn't capitalism, its socialism and the weak arse population. Its not something people want to hear though.

Where do we start? Ensure everyone is at their correct BMI, nobody should be unhealthy at their age unless they have some serious genetic defect. I honestly believe if we can get the majority of the population at their correct weight through healthy means, our society will be better off and much stronger for it.

There is nothing wrong with capitalism. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. It is only economic theory and it operates very well.

The problem is government. Specifically, the role of govt in society in balancing public and private interests. This is particularly egregious in the US where you have been socialized for 70+ yrs, coming out of MCcarthy and the red scare bullshit, to believe that everything else is socialist.

It is a basic failure to understand the separation of roles. Instead we make up new bullshit labels like crony capitalism, we justify ridiculous ideas like taxation is illegal, and we are all about me, me, me...but if you say we are about us, us, us, you are a commie.

The beauty of capitalism is that it still works very well even under considerable constraints. Constraints which are the role of govt. We regulate the hell out of airlines and utilities yet they are mostly privately owned, profitable and many pay decent dividends. Even when things fcuk up in these sectors it is at least partially a failure of shitty govt oversight.

The economic engine needs to be managed (not directed), and not mitigated. Capitalism is not the enemy. The grotesque failure of the political class is the problem. In the US that starts with total failure in developing critical thinking skills in school and way too much time focused on regurgitating US history and figures. That nonsense waste of time is at the expense of understanding the actual roles of govt, basic economics, financial literacy, etc..

And yes, I have studied pretty much everyone from Plato to Hobbes to Rousseau to Nietzsche to Marx to Sartre, and that includes Smith and Locke.

Adam Smith warned that unchecked capitalism leads to corruption, monopolies, and exploitation. He argued that businesses will conspire against the public interest if left unregulated, stating:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

He also advocated for government intervention when necessary to ensure fair competition, protect workers, and fund public goods like education and infrastructure. Smith saw capitalism as a tool for prosperity—not an untouchable ideology.

Nice satire.

Now what's your real, serious answer?

@SUD123456: @br0kenrabbit: I haven't been batting 1.000 today on understanding people, but based on past exchanges with you both I think you're on the same page as each other. That is to say, you seem to be advocating for capitalism as a base with regulations and social programs where they make sense, but are just getting hung up on language like "mitigation".

Perhaps. I see Capitalism as just one tool in a set of tools, and we need a whole toolbox to get things done. I suppose I can be a bit antagonistic toward the purists, or any attempt to make Capitalism look like divinity.

@mrbojangles25: that is the real answer. People are turds. Capitalism is the best, and honestly it doesn't go far enough. Even if we have super amazing AI that is capable of doing everything and unlimited food and resources, every single person on this planet better work or they can just **** off. That's what I honestly think about the people of this world. We also need to raise the retirement age to 80, way too many lazy fucks out there.

We need to start at fundamentals though. Give tax breaks to people that are at optimal BMI, and tax the shit out of junk food and overweight/obese people. I honestly would put any senior that has ideal bmi and physically peak, running marathons as the gold standard. These are the people that deserve golden pension packages.

How about we just gas anyone who can't solve a Lorentz transformation? A whole lot of stupid in the gene pool rn.

Wait ... can you solve a Lorentz transformation? Did you have to Google that?

@br0kenrabbit: Yeah, I get it. I just don't think SUD is an ideological purist. Maybe a vocabulary purist? He's more of a stickler for denotations, whereas I tend to bend to the connotations of my intended audience more readily, and we often miscommunicate because of it.

@mattbbpl: Hmmm, I believe the term is false opposition.

@br0kenrabbit: I had to look that up, but it seems apt.

I don't care how smart you are, it doesn't matter in the age of AI. Chatgpt can probably solve a 100 lorentz transformations in 5 minutes. If you can't keep proper weight, its a far more serious problem...its a problem of lacking discipline. Not to mention, if you have poor physical health, you're a drag on the society, unable to contribute, probably have terrible habits, probably in poor psychological health as well. If you can't take care of yourself in the most basic of ways, how can you be expected to do anything else? Every single person should be able to run a 5k in under 35 minutes. Thats literally the bare minimum.

That's ultimately where this leads.

Also the irony here is that the hardest working people tend to have pretty unhealthy habits. When you work 60+ hours each work, you don't have much time to meal prep and go to the gym.

Interesting, I didn't hear a "no we shouldn't gas people" in that response...

Yet you insist that even if we have everything given to us by robots, people should still work, event though it doesn't matter 'in the age of AI'.

Why the hypocrisy?

The problem we have with Capitalism right now, is not due to more government intervention needed, it's the fact that the wrong type of intervention is happening.

More should be done to break up monopolies and duopolies. And the big banks that were in trouble during the crash of '08 should have been left to their fate. Same with all the wall street banks that were getting short squeezed on gamestop.

What we have now is more like Crony Capitalism.

Wishful thinking. I 100% agree a mismanaged business should fail whether a bank, General Motors, etc...,

Something tells me the average American wouldn't know what to do if a number of banks failed within a close timeframe or if they couldn't withdraw $$$$ from a bank. Other countries have experienced such a thing but if it happened here, you'd see people jumping out of buildings like the crash of '29. 1929.

Leaving banks to fail would lead to a depression.

I don't think so. Most banks are backed by deposit insurance, at least in Canada. FDIC in the USA.

So the bank would go under, but clients would get their money back. And be free to deposit it into a bank that was less fiscally irresponsible.

FDIC has a cap. I don't know about Canada.

Funny thing is, a lot of the people that he worship don't even meet his standards. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are fat as shit, and you know they have poor physical health. Yet people like that wouldn't have those requirements on people like them. And people didn't want Biden to run when he was 78. Yet he wants people to work until they're 80? 😵‍💫

You're right about hardworking people not having the healthiest habits. The only reason my daddy somewhat eats healthy is because I cook for him. Bless his heart, but he can't really cook.

Tbh, I do think we should have technology doing things for us. I've always said that the ideal thing was to make technology to handle the labor that humans don't want to do, and then have humans in the humanitarian fields. I've heard they're inventing AI to detect breast cancer in the early stages, which is a great use of AI.

Though everything else that guy said was nonsense. No compassion for people. According to people like him, disabled people, old people, fat people, and other undesirables shouldn't be allowed to live... Imagine serving your country, you get an injury that disabled you, only for right wingers to say you deserve nothing because you're disabled.

That's pretty much the Trump Admin rn with the VA cuts. Was it Elon or Trump who said "We're too good to our veterans"?

You takin the piss mate??

@luxuryheart: that's basically "Trekonomics" in a nutshell.

The author describes the 24th-century Star Trek universe in which scarcity does not exist at all. The book explores a post-scarcity age and how our society would need to change to adapt itself to such an environment. It looks at the expectations regarding automation and artificial intelligence and takes readers through a journey of the fictional, moneyless world ofStar Trek. It also looks at the challenges to the Star Trek economy.

AI/automation takes us so far that essentially all things people need simply are available--food, medicine, utilities, etc-- and pioneering the galaxy has led to an abundance. Money is no longer needed, and instead people work for the betterment of mankind.

It's my ideal system: everyone is allowed to prosper, no one lives in poverty, everyone works for the greater good. There is no scarcity so there is no greed, no hoarding, no withholding.

I mean, imagine waking up tomorrow and never having to worry about food, rent, utilities, or healthcare because you have it all, forever. Imagine never having to worry about how you're going to get anywhere because public transportation is at a point that driving your own vehicle is a pain in the ass.

I think we are closer than we want to admit. The world produces more than enough calories to feed everyone, and with food processing and transportation and other things so advanced and developed we could cure hunger if we wanted to.

At which point, someone makes it their life mission to convert you to X.

Always gonna be people angling for control of others.

Too true.

People out there just can't fathom a world where everyone prospers; in their minds, they think someone always needs to win and someone always needs to lose. God forbid we live in a world where we all win

I think it might be time to start labelling these things mental health issues. Hell, we already do (what with affluenza). Maybe we need to remove these people from positions of power under the circumstances that they are too rich and powerful to make rational decisions for the majority of people. We all know it's true and is already happening.

Would it be nice if we were all less greedy, and nicer to each other? Sure.

But you could take all the wealth in the world, divvy it up evenly between every man woman and child. And within a week, we would have gross inequity again. There no "mental illness" is not being blind to reality.

Maybe we need to remove these people from positions of power under the circumstances that they are too rich and powerful to make rational decisions for the majority of people.

And who steps into their place, who wouldn't be corrupted by power all the same? Anyone who would actually want that job would likely end up being just as corrupt in the end.

1. Not saying we just divvy up the wealthy. I'm just saying we make it harder to get super-wealthy, and a bit easier to prosper. You can do this in a lot of ways that don't require taking wealth from one class and giving it to another, such as:

• Investing in nuclear and renewable energy sources to make utilities more affordable. Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear...the whole shebang. Get the hell off coal and gas and export that shit
• Build more houses, and reassess how we go about doing that. The whole building houses out of trees thing is kind of backwards at this point. I mean it works and so on but there's this thing where Americans close their eyes and think of a house they want and it's the same fucking house we've been building for 100 years.
• Invest in public transportation so people have more access to jobs they don't know (if they lack a car, for example).
• Invest in education, especially K-12, so we have a more capable and educated work force that is qualified for better jobs.
• All insurance is non-profit, all higher education is non-profit, all utilities are non-profit....oh and make internet a utility.
• And so on and so forth.

I think the problem with wealthy people running the government is that everything is transactional, and that transaction is usually dollar-to-dollar. They don't really think about intangible returns like a healthier or smarter populace, or better roads that mean cars break down less often, and so on.

2. Not wealthy people, for starters. Definitely not billionaires or any sort of "tycoon" type. No real estate magnates, tech bros, casino owners, utility owners, etc. Add term limits to solve the issue of people being in too long, coupled with plenty of checks and balances. It's not hard. We used to be better at it.

You shouldn't run a government like a publicly-traded business.

I mean, that's really what it comes down to in the end: the government is an organization staffed by the people to provide services for the people with tax revenue generated by the people.

And, to be clear, I will take back all of what I have said and change my beliefs if the elite oligarchs start paying what they owe and contribute back to society what society has so generously given to them. But until then, it's class warfare, baby!

Despite the fun I have playing a frothing-at-the-mouth socialist on here, I'm still a big believer in capitalism. It's just "capitalism" with a lower-case "c", not upper case. I don't deify it like many Americans do

*sorry for the rant lol. Just spitballin here

@mrbojangles25: What's infuriating is that we recognized that governance and industrial conflicts of interest were best avoided as recently as prior to Trump's first term. Right before he stared us straight in the eyes and shit all over the emoluments clause.

Now that we've failed to push back on it, we have a cabinet full of kleptocrats raiding the Treasury out in the open. We are so ****ed.

I believe that has happened before, or we see in times of panic on a smaller scale, a run on banks, and when EVERYONE wants their money back it can lead to catastrophe.

So yes while people are insured, the banks don't have enough capital available to literally "pay out" everyone.

I might be mistaken, though.

Definitely a problem, but for better or worse it is why we can't let bank simply fail. I think maybe a better alternative would be that they change ownership to the government and become non-profit or less greedy, maybe? At least until they can pay back what they owe or prove themselves to be a solid business before returning to be a publicly-traded company. Let the shareholders and board fail instead of the general populace. I don't know.

Banks are FDIC insured up $250,000. Not that I would care if the wealthy lost their money but it's still not a 100%.

The right has been brainwashed into believing that billionaires will save you. No, they will save themselves.

Understand that power dynamics can shift. No matter if it is government, corporations, or a combination of both. Checks and balances exist for a reason. Regulations exist for a reason. Without these, the system becomes broken.

This article is a stark reminder of just how true that is.

Meanwhile Finland has enough shelters to shelter almost entire population. But I guess living next to an aggressive nuclear super power makes you take preparations and planning for the worst more seriously.