Why do people honestly hate capitalism so much now?

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There were very few privileged families. Not like in Capitalism that is.
Not even close.

You are probably talking about Social policies which were pretty dogmatic marxist leninist and there was some degree of indoctrination and oppression. There was also pretty dark period after war that caused a lot of problems.
This however does not negate what I was saying about economy.
No country is without some problems.
My main point here is that for every problem say China has US has too. I was watching China politics commentators who were critical of China for some time. Most issues in China exist in US too, just in slightly different form.
The difference is caused by different approaches to resolving socio economical policies.

When for example people talk about oppression in communism they don't talk about red scare or about people being wrongfully persecuted for being communist sympathizers in US.
US also has its own version of indoctrination and mass manipulation so much so that you entered 3 major wars without really consequently wanting to under false government pretense namely Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam.
These wars were absolutely of no positive consequence to everyday life Americans.
So the west tends to have a blind spot for its own errors in system.

Lets not forget Russia is capitalist too.

I think it's silly, I even hear some people outright saying "I hate capitalism". I think they are blaming it on the wrong issue. Capitalism per se is not oppressive or bad. And yet, all countries that large-scale converted to pure socialism have become totalitarian hell-holes and Josef Stalin alone murdered even more people than Hitler.

If socialism was the dominant economic system, we'd all be concerned with it's shortcomings.
If feudalism was the dominant economic system, we'd all be concerned with it's shortcomings. (so long as we had the vocabulary and understanding to discuss them)

The shortcomings of systems we only interact with on a hypothetical level are far less relevant to our thinking.

Russia is anything but capitalist. Cronyism is what describes Russia better. You can be a billionaire in Russia and if you get the message that you have to sell you company, you have to do so otherwise they destroy you. They confiscate your property, they publicly discredit you, they put you in jail. This has happened repeatedly. This is what happens in China too. There is no free market without the rule of law and the guarantee that nobody can force you to make involuntary decisions.

If every poor attempt at socialism counts as socialism, why would deeply corrupt market economies not count as capitalism?

Russia's attempts at socialism and capitalism both failed due to long-standing problems with cronyism and absolutism. If they can't resolve those issues it doesn't matter what ideology they embrace but that might be difficult because the society appears traumatized by the Golden Horde as well as by it's own leadership for the past 500 years.

Cronyism, vodka and absolutism have been problems for most of that 500 years.

^ Don't forget corruption as an important part of the system and regular disregard for their own laws. And political terror police - the invention of Ivan the Terrible, in various forms surviving all the changes of ideologies.

BTW, I'm glad to see you again posting I learned some nasty things about Canadian police in the meantime, which inspired rather bad parts of my imagination. So I'm happy to see you're alright

Nice analogy.

The difference between the free market and socialism is that capitalism sort of works, even in terribly corrupt Russia. While socialism has never worked.



Honestly I do not expect the Russian population after what it went through with the tzars and all the ordeal with communism to be able to function as a society. They are a traumatised nation. They need a lot of time to heal.

This might be a question of how one defines 'works'. It's hard to argue capitalism is working for all the people it leaves behind; it's hard to claim capitalism is working for the earth; it's one thing to claim that capitalism has brought benefits, but insisting it's working is admitting one finds it's short-comings to be acceptable.

From there it's a question of whether further reform or something more radical is needed to address those short-comings. Mind you, neither of those paths is a shortcut to utopia, they'll require constant effort and involvement if they're to work.

Marxist dictatorships typically accomplished goals like increasing literacy and access to medical care. That seems like a degree of success, no?

Last edited by funeralxempire on 20 Jan 2023, 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

At first I was taking a break, then my computer decided to take a break.

I find it's shortcomings unavoidable. This is an imperfect world and no human arrangement is going to make it any different. We leave in a world of scarce resources while our needs are limitless. The free market delivers much more effectively than the centrally planed economy does. Not to mention that the free market is democracy compatible, while the centrally planed economy needs coercion in order to be implemented.




For me the best way to address those shortcomings is deregulation. To minimise the state to the smallest possible. Because socialism was tried many times and failed miserably. Let's try the other way arround.



This reminds me of a story of how in Eastern Germany the communist higher ups were sure that the people wouldn't want to join the West world because in communism they had learned opera and ballet, and chess a nd philosophy. They were very surprised to see the people in protest demanding marmalade in their store's shelves. The central planners are unable to decide what each member of society needs the most. The free market can spontaneously do that through the flactuation of the prices.

The free market consistently demonstrates it needs assistance and regulation to function. Further, all of the entities within the so-called free market are planned economies themselves. Walmart doesn't have some method of allowing customers to determine what is stocked; Walmart makes deals with suppliers, stocks those products and plans around that. Customers can either buy or not buy what they have but can't directly influence what is ordered.

At best they can trigger an order by buying the last of something that's already sold.

Further, starvation is a significant source of coercion, so how exactly does coercion not play a role in capitalism? Hunger and homelessness are among the coercive threats a capitalist society holds over people's heads.

I agree though, the world is imperfect and a change in economic system won't resolve that, at best it will change the problems a society faces. That said, knowing it won't lead to utopia is not an argument against a system.




We have regulations due to the earlier failures of an unregulated system though. How many regulations existed in the era of the robber barons?
If we eliminated them we'd just end up reinstating them after we've been reminded why they existed in the first place.



I'm not sure chess and opera are comparable to education and healthcare. The latter are necessities that improve one's standard of living. The former, not so much.

I'm not sure access to consumer goods is the most definitive issue a society faces, especially when over-consumption appears to be our biggest concern at the moment.

Somewhere I heard we produce globally more food than people need to survive world wide.
Despite Globalism that is over-connected world hunger is not eliminated easily albeit it got better in some parts of the world.

As you say free market is ideology that in it self can be easily used as coercive tool.

I would also say having 10 types of marmalade does not make me super happy citizen.

Coercion exists in all government forms. Some more and some less.
However capitalism alone does not mean less coercion.
Capitalism =/= democracy.

Feudalism also used a version of capitalism. For example people would loan each other money.

Large scale capitalism and government that runs it can take many forms.

Government intervention of any kind always results in someone being coerced or disadvantaged if the policies are not properly planned.

In Germany today they are kicking out activist who are trying stop companies from bulldozinga village.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/14/euro ... index.html

Do you think then that capitalism or even democratic capitalism cannot have forms of coercion?

I agree socialism if planned centralized can coerce people in many ways.

But just because people enjoy some versions of consumer freedom does not mean you are not coerced.

esp. if none of them are affordable.

I wrote an extensive reply to each of your points but it didn't post it and now I lost the text. God damn it!

So now I'm not going to write all that again in my phone. I will reply much shortly.

It is acknowledged that the market goes through periods of recession. There have been three strategies of how to cope with them
1. Let the market sort it out (Astrian school). Pure classical liberalism- doesn't think the state can do anything really.
2. Fiscal policy (Keynesianism). Implemented during the great depression. Accused of turning a periodic recession into the great depression. Considered a pseudoscience.
3. Monetary policy (Milton Friedman, classical liberal). Implemented during the 2008 recession. Causes inflation, like the one we are going through right now. Risk of interference in the democratic process. Modern banking system maladies.

Conclusion: The market goes through flactuations. Government can't really do anything about it. Politicians face preasure from public discontent. They try intervention. Intervention makes things worse (see great depression). Milton Friedman proposes monetary policy which works if implemented correctly. In this way politicians can appear to intervene without making things worse.

Despite the cyclical recessions, overall the free market works much better than a centraly planed economy. That is because central planners are unable to decide what each member of society needs the most and effectively calculate the amount of resources allocated to that need. While the free market spontaneously does that through the flactuation of prices.

I would also direct you to the "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" in regard of what motivates people. As a psychological argument instead of economics argument. The economics argument is the ability of the market to allocate resources efficiently through the flactuation of prices.

For example: Suppose that at a given moment there is a certain amount of raw milk produced. That milk can be processed into processed milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream and other products. How does an economy decide how much of it to allocate to each final product. The individual preference of the customers will decide. The more customers are willing to pay for a product, the more incentive there is for the producer to buy the raw milk. If more people are willing to pay more for ice cream than for yogurt, the ice cream producer has more revenue and thus more capital to compete the yogurt producer for a bigger share of the raw milk. Thus the limited resource of raw milk is correctly allocated according to the demand of the people.

A centrally planned economy is completely unable to allocate resources correctly. It has to keep thousands of bureaucrats to keep track of all needs of the people while simultaneously properly calculate the amount of each resource allocate to each need. This inability resulted in a tremendous waste of resources. For example, they would produce more yogurt than ice cream. But people want ice cream instead of yogurt. So you have a lot of people not getting what they want and a lot of yogurt that nobody wants and it is left to rot. Now multiply that with the billions of products consumers need in an economy and you have a total mess.