Political Discussion and Commentary
A place to discuss politics and offer political commentary. Self posts are preferred, but links to current events and news are allowed. Opinion pieces are welcome on a case by case basis, and discussion of and disagreement about issues is encouraged!
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I see. I like the idea of a mix of social programs and regulated capitalism and I feel like capitalism has run amok for far too long. I’m sure you all understand it better than I do.
We all start somewhere! My politics were more like yours a while back, but now I would disagree that it is possible to keep capitalism regulated. Since then, I have come to understand that the basic drives of capitalism, especially the one that forces every capitalist to increase the amount of profit they get and the rate of increase of their profit, would just make them throw money into politics and overcome any possible regulations.
Keep reading and you'll get explanations of how capitalism works and you can decide for yourself whether regulation is possible or not.
To provide a simple historical example without getting into too much of the theory, consider the progression from The New Deal to where we are now. That was about as close as the US got to social democracy and that's been all but destroyed over the following decades by capitalists. But yeah they should definitely read more if they want to understand the mechanisms in more detail.
You get it. Regulated capitalism is ideal. Problem being, as with any economic/political system, the rich rise to the top and take over. Lemmy's hate for capitalism is childish.
"This sucks so burn it all down!"
Well, I kinda get that feel, but baby with the bathwater is a thing.
Capitalism describes a system of exploitation by which a privileged few profit from the labor of others. Regulated capitalism (also known as welfare capitalism) has only ever come about as a result of popular labor and social movements (which tended to be explicitly socialist) fighting for labor rights and threatening revolution, causing the owning class to allow reforms and expansion of welfare as a form of appeasement. This happened in the US mid-20th century and it succeeded in taking the wind out of the sails of the movement, and since then the owning class has steadily eroded the welfare state through austerity.
Capitalism should not be preserved because it creates inequality by design; that is its purpose. You can claim that is a childish perspective, but here are some of the people you're calling childish:
You have a limited perspective right now because you've been conditioned to dismiss alternatives with little thought. So was I, but I've since learned the history of capitalism and how it functions, as well as the various movements against it and what they've accomplished.