Current Events > C/D: Capitalism is unsustainable in the long run

(+) Yeah! (+)

inb4 "commie", "tankie", "free market", "freedom" etc.

Let's not mince words here, communism has fucked up a lot of people and authoritarianism has primarily manifested in communist societies. It's sickening that there are people who call themselves Maoist, because that son of a bitch destroyed hundreds or thousands of years worth of Chinese artifacts and buildings in an effort to totally militarize China and cement his legacy as a great leader who rose China to new heights of military aggression. The man destroyed centuries worth of Chinese history and replaced them with rifles and grenades, and it was this "industrial revolution" that arguably paved the way for China's sweatshop culture, not to mention the authoritarian way that China's government keeps an eye on the population. Mao Zedong is a piece of shit, and any fluff talk about the greater good that came out of his mass-murdering mouth was to keep people in poverty while he lived in luxury, like any despot - including that fat fuck Kim Jong Un.

So yes, communism bad. Don't get me wrong here.

But the thing about capitalism is that it relies on permanent growth. For a business to succeed and thrive, it's expected to do more and more business every year. By trading on the stock market, anyone with the money can buy a bunch of stocks in your company and become a shareholder, at which point they can have some sway in how you run your company. And of course, as a shareholder, you want the company to become more successful so you make more money. So when a company's earnings dip, shareholders bail or get angry, which might make them sell their stock, which might lower the price of your stock and make your company less profitable, which means you need to keep making more and more money unless you want to risk tanking your company.

But the thing is, resources are limited. We could create an unlimited amount of wood, but it's time consuming and companies need it now to make their products and make money. Coal and oil are not renewable, but we'll still dig gaping craters into the earth looking for it, even if it means polluting drinking water for tens of thousands of people. In Australia, the government gave an Indian coal company permission to open a coal mine right next to the Great Barrier Reef - the run-off from this mine will probably be the nail in the Reef's coffin. All in the name of short-term profits.

And for what? To stockpile the most amount of money? To be the most successful company ever? What is the end goal? Why do companies like Disney grow and grow in the name of profit, accumulating billions of dollars in revenue - where does the money go?

Capitalism isn't sustainable. Companies can't grow infinitely, resources can't last forever and there's only so much money in the world to be locked away behind the doors of a megacorporation. Capitalism is designed to collapse, the only question is when it's going to fail and who's gonna be holding the rope when it happens.

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D, it's pretty great

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I think you're mixing the ideology of capitalism, which is pretty broad and largely revolves around private property with modern business practices. You can have one without the other. Many of the best societies in the world are capitalist with strong welfare states.

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New jobs get created, eg the internet boon. Is what many economists would probably say.

Part of the issue is how do you define capitalism. Like, privatized markets are really good in a lot of cases for resource distribution. They cause efficiency, ie the best use of resources given the parameters the market has.

Restaurants are part of a really efficient and equalized market, restaurants do not 'create a lot of new wealth' but they serve people's needs. A nationalized restaurant chain would almost certainly not serve people as optimally as the free market does.

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Capitalism has led to a mass extinction event every time it's been tried

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MrMallard posted...

But the thing is, resources are limited. We could create an unlimited amount of wood, but it's time consuming and companies need it now to make their products and make money.

What you're not taking into account is that existing resources are put to new uses over time, meaning you don't need infinite resources to have permanent economic growth.

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ssjevot posted...

I think you're mixing the ideology of capitalism, which is pretty broad and largely revolves around private property with modern business practices. You can have one without the other. Many of the best societies in the world are capitalist with strong welfare states.

Maybe so. It just feels like we're on our way over the edge of a cliff y'know.

Doe posted...

New jobs get created, eg the internet boon. Is what many economists would probably say.

Part of the issue is how do you define capitalism. Like, privatized markets are really good in a lot of cases for resource distribution. They cause efficiency, ie the best use of resources given the parameters the market has.

Restaurants are part of a really efficient and equalized market, restaurants do not 'create a lot of new wealth' but they serve people's needs. A nationalized restaurant chain would almost certainly not serve people as optimally as the free market does.

I feel like there's never going to be enough jobs to go around though. Like, retirement age is creeping higher and higher because older people can't afford to retire and because companies don't want to risk replacing a good worker with a relatively untested one. And even with the birth of new companies and the growth of established ones, there are always going to be people who can't rise to the top of the job market and flounder in unemployment. That, in turn, might stem from a lack of opportunities in that person's life, or from not having the same access to resources that other people might have. At any given point, there aren't going to be enough jobs available in America to keep all your hundreds of millions of people in a job. Even with the expansion of other companies into new business ventures, if those ventures don't serve a profitable purpose, any jobs it creates will be nullified in the end with that venture's failure.

Saying that, you make some interesting points in your other paragraphs. I guess it is how you define capitalism, and the other poster makes a solid point in that I might be equating modern business practices with capitalism as a whole. It's a fine concept, but I can't help but feel like the way it's going today, it's only a matter of time before capitalist society crashes headfirst into a wall like a speeding bus.

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Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

Socialism has led to a mass extinction event every time it's been tried

ftfy

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MrMallard posted...

Saying that, you make some interesting points in your other paragraphs. I guess it is how you define capitalism, and the other poster makes a solid point in that I might be equating modern business practices with capitalism as a whole. It's a fine concept, but I can't help but feel like the way it's going today, it's only a matter of time before capitalist society crashes headfirst into a wall like a speeding bus.

I assume you live in America? If you do it's understandable why you feel that way.

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Consumerism is the real problem here and why we're killing our planet, but to be fair that's a problem caused by America's Capitalism.
My parents always go on by how items such as lunchboxes break down over a year of use, but when they were kids, it lasted them at LEAST two decades.
Consumerism pushes companies to make products that break fast to entice people to keep coming back, this is because companies that make items that can't be consumed by the body see themselves at a disagvantage compared to companies that make Chocolate, Soda, Makeup, Soap, etc.

It's fucked.
At least that's how I see it.

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MrMallard posted...

I feel like there's never going to be enough jobs to go around though. Like, retirement age is creeping higher and higher because older people can't afford to retire and because companies don't want to risk replacing a good worker with a relatively untested one. And even with the birth of new companies and the growth of established ones, there are always going to be people who can't rise to the top of the job market and flounder in unemployment. That, in turn, might stem from a lack of opportunities in that person's life, or from not having the same access to resources that other people might have. At any given point, there aren't going to be enough jobs available in America to keep all your hundreds of millions of people in a job. Even with the expansion of other companies into new business ventures, if those ventures don't serve a profitable purpose, any jobs it creates will be nullified in the end with that venture's failure.

It may be true that there's not enough jobs for 100% employment, I'm not an expert on that, but the question you're framing is something more like 'are we making progress too fast?' And there's a lot of possible answers to that sort of thing.
You are correct that just as markets reward success, they crush failure. It's referred to as "creative destruction." It's tolerated because the increase in efficiency and utility to everyone outweighs the loss of jobs in the losing firm.
There's always a big asterisk that while this stuff maximizes net social good, all individuals do not break out evenly. And there's a lot of argument over how to help those failures

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Mikokiri posted...

Consumerism is the real problem here and why we're killing our planet, but to be fair that's a problem caused by America's Capitalism.
My parents always go on by how items such as lunchboxes break down over a year of use, but when they were kids, it lasted them at LEAST two decades.
Consumerism pushes companies to make products that break fast to entice people to keep coming back, this is because companies that make items that can't be consumed by the body see themselves at a disagvantage compared to companies that make Chocolate, Soda, Makeup, Soap, etc.

It's fucked.
At least that's how I see it.

so much anecdotal fallacies in this post omg

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I mean he does have a point about planned obsolescence. Make shit that breaks easier, and you have to replace it sooner. This practice plays into my point about limited resources, because a company would rather waste resources on a piece of shit that's made to be thrown away and get bought again instead of providing a quality product.

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Mike_Stanton posted...

ftfy

Were...were dinosaurs socialist??

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Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

Were...were dinosaurs socialist??

inb4 "dinosaurs were Darwinist" followed by a bunch of stupid ass social Darwinist talking points

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capitalism is bad when businesses manage to brainwash government and citizens into believing bullshit like a businesss only responsibility is to make a profit, so we cant be mad when they employ unethical or anti-consumer practices

Have a strong system of regulation and oversight that keeps businesses accountable for the responsibility towards consumers and the environment, and I dont think theres anything inherently wrong with capitalism.

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200 years and going fine gtfo

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AlisLandale posted...

capitalism is bad when businesses manage to brainwash government and citizens into believing bullshit like a businesss only responsibility is to make a profit, so we cant be mad when they employ unethical or anti-consumer practices

Have a strong system of regulation and oversight that keeps businesses accountable for the responsibility towards consumers and the environment, and I dont think theres anything inherently wrong with capitalism.

Basically

The inherent flaw with capitalism is that those who have the capital also hold all the bargaining chips, allowing them to exert influence over politicians
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MarqueeSeries posted...

Basically

The inherent flaw with capitalism is that those who have the capital also hold all the bargaining chips, allowing them to exert influence over politicians

That's why capitalism requires some amount of democracy in government in order to prevent it from devolving to crony capitalism.

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It collapses and needs a government bailout every 10 years. Shit was never sustainable, at least how America does it

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in a world where we're getting closer and closer to the point where our machines/computers/ai will be taking over the vast majority of jobs i'd say capitalism is becoming more and more unsustainable...

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AlisLandale posted...

Have a strong system of regulation and oversight that keeps businesses accountable for the responsibility towards consumers and the environment, and I dont think theres anything inherently wrong with capitalism.

This, coupled with a strong welfare state, is how I feel
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lol ok. you'll understand when you're older

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Someday a meteor will reset everything anyways.

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C

it's essentially a gigantic pyramid scheme. it will collapse at some point

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Do we have a viable alternative?

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MrMallard posted...

which might make them sell their stock, which might lower the price of your stock and make your company less profitable,

What

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"Capitalism is bad! /only argues against extreme laissez faire capitalism and not any realistic models that have proven to work"

"Socialism is bad! /only argues against prior attempts that failed for reasons not intrinsic to socialism"

Can we all just admit that capitalism is fine and social safety nets + some regulations are fine, we really just disagree on the degree of each

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AlisLandale posted...

capitalism is bad when businesses manage to brainwash government and citizens into believing bullshit like a businesss only responsibility is to make a profit, so we cant be mad when they employ unethical or anti-consumer practices

Have a strong system of regulation and oversight that keeps businesses accountable for the responsibility towards consumers and the environment, and I dont think theres anything inherently wrong with capitalism.

This post gave me a semi

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C


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g980 posted...

"Capitalism is bad! /only argues against extreme laissez faire capitalism and not any realistic models that have proven to work"

"Socialism is bad! /only argues against prior attempts that failed for reasons not intrinsic to socialism"

Can we all just admit that capitalism is fine and social safety nets + some regulations are fine, we really just disagree on the degree of each

the question is not about whether anything is "fine" -- it's about whether or not capitalism is sustainable. fundamentally, it is not. regardless of social safety nets, capitalism depends on the capacity of humans to exploit other humans.

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C, never gonna make it

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AlisLandale posted...

capitalism is bad when businesses manage to brainwash government and citizens into believing bullshit like a businesss only responsibility is to make a profit, so we cant be mad when they employ unethical or anti-consumer practices

Have a strong system of regulation and oversight that keeps businesses accountable for the responsibility towards consumers and the environment, and I dont think theres anything inherently wrong with capitalism.

This.

Good luck convincing the politicians in DC, though.

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Mike_Stanton posted...

That's why capitalism requires some amount of democracy in government in order to prevent it from devolving to crony capitalism.

Capitalism requires massive amounts of democracy in order to be even remotely functional and beneficial. Makes you wonder why it's worth all the bother of having capitalism in the first place. It's like having tigers roaming around because some rando in your country likes the color orange.

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Actual economic growth only occurs when more things are able to be made with a given amount of resources. Other types of growth are illusions created by inflation. Issue is that there's a limit to how few physical resources can go into a physical product and still function. Labor can continue to be made more effecient, however, if made perfectly effecient, you end up with infinite product made with 0 labor which means the value of labor is 0. You don't need to get to 0 though to make the value of labor too low to support the economy.

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It's like these TC's don't realize that there are literal records of socialism and communism destroying their people. Nazism, North Korea, China, USSR, millions upon millions dead because of their regimes.

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uwnim posted...

Actual economic growth only occurs when more things are able to be made with a given amount of resources. Other types of growth are illusions created by inflation. Issue is that there's a limit to how few physical resources can go into a physical product and still function. Labor can continue to be made more effecient, however, if made perfectly effecient, you end up with infinite product made with 0 labor which means the value of labor is 0. You don't need to get to 0 though to make the value of labor too low to support the economy.

this would be a non-issue in an economic system that wasn't fixated primarily on generating profit for corporate overlords.

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Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

Capitalism has led to a mass extinction event every time it's been tried

god damn capitalist dinosaurs!

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uwnim posted...

Actual economic growth only occurs when more things are able to be made with a given amount of resources. Other types of growth are illusions created by inflation. Issue is that there's a limit to how few physical resources can go into a physical product and still function. Labor can continue to be made more effecient, however, if made perfectly effecient, you end up with infinite product made with 0 labor which means the value of labor is 0. You don't need to get to 0 though to make the value of labor too low to support the economy.

While true, this assume we're anywhere near approaching this in our lifetime.

But suppose we're getting there, and jobs are being automated faster than theyre being replaced. Why not a combination of capitalism and UBI?

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It will require a sharp shift. Like instead of paying the cost of manufacture of an item as part of its price, we will pay its environmental cost as part of it. Eventually stuff like plane flights, cruises and beef will become luxury items.

puppy posted...

It's like these TC's don't realize that there are literal records of socialism and communism destroying their people. Nazism, North Korea, China, USSR, millions upon millions dead because of their regimes.

Nazism was very capitalist.

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g980 posted...

While true, this assume we're anywhere near approaching this in our lifetime.

But suppose we're getting there, and jobs are being automated faster than theyre being replaced. Why not a combination of capitalism and UBI?

because providing the services directly is much better than providing money for the services. cuts out middle men. makes sure that no one is exploiting basic humans needs for profit

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puppy posted...

It's like these TC's don't realize that there are literal records of socialism and communism destroying their people. Nazism, North Korea, China, USSR, millions upon millions dead because of their regimes.

It's like you didn't read the TC's opening paragraph where he shot down communism as well.

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What about meritocracy?

Capitalism, in it's most literal sense, will always lead to drastic wealth inequalities. Which if you value negatively, I would suppose would be qualified as an unsustainable quality.

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trappedunderice posted...

What about meritocracy?

The problem with meritocracy is that what we consider to be a merit is entirely subjective. I mean, capitalists already think we live in a meritocracy. Having money is the highest, if not only, merit one can hold.

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IShall_Run_Amok posted...

The problem with meritocracy is that what we consider to be a merit is entirely subjective. I mean, capitalists already think we live in a meritocracy. Having money is the highest, if not only, merit one can hold.

So the ability to get money?

You might have a point yet if you look at the other major economic systems of the past, they seem more unsustainable than capitalism is.

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puppy posted...

It's like these TC's don't realize that there are literal records of socialism and communism destroying their people. Nazism, North Korea, China, USSR, millions upon millions dead because of their regimes.

Look at my example against Mao Zedong.

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