politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
- No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
- No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Could you walk me through why you think democracy necessitates capitalism?
Capitalism on its own is very anti-democratic. Given enough time, most industries would become a monopoly.
A strong Democracy should have sufficient guard rails for the population to counteract the influence of capitalism: strong unions, solid worker protections, limitation of money in politics, higher tax rates on wealth, and so on. The Nordic countries are a good example of this.
Ok, I think we're miscommunicating. Either my question was't formulated very clearly, or I misunderstood what you said in the first place. I took what you said ("democracy needs capitalism") to mean "if you want democracy, you need capitalism", or alternatively "if you don't have capitalism, you cannot have democracy". My question is why you believe this (if you do, that is; I may have misunderstood).
Your answer I completely agree with, but it just argues that capitalism is harmful to democracy and that at best democracy is like a guard rail for capitalism. If anything it shows that capitalism and democracy are kind of incompatible.
And it's a side track, but the Nordic countries are not a good example of democracy counteracting the excesses of capitalism. They've just outsourced the worst of the misery to the global South. And domestically the situation for workers gets worse year by year (although they're a long way from dropping to American levels).