Comment by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com on Raspberry Pi launches its IPO

It was nice knowing Raspberry Pi while they lasted. Going to suck losing something that has changed the homegrown embedded system hobby forever.

Sooner or later capitalism ruins everything.

Then it’s a good thing that no countries have pure capitalism for their economy.

We need regulation on corporations to keep them in check.

I can’t wait till those regulations get enforced.

You’re right. You CAN’T wait for it.

Because waiting for it would imply it would eventually happen.

If you’re having trouble finding when it is enforced you can look at websites like this one that list out the many cases brought up against companies (for the U.S. at least).

http://ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings

then it’s a good thing that no countries have pure capitalism for their economy

America: 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅

America doesn’t have a pure capitalist economy.

A pure capitalist economy would have a free market system with no government intervention.

Almost every country has a mix between capitalism and socialism for their economies.

A pure capitalist economy is terrible just as much as a pure socialist economy would be terrible.
The trick is finding the right balance between the two.

Government doing things ≠ socialism.

Government regulating things ≠ socialism

Roads and parks ≠ socialism

Socialism is based in the collective ownership of companies by the workers who make everything happen, rather than execs and managers. Socialism isn’t when government does stuff or when healthcare.

I’m just going off of the definition here:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism

any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

We definitely don’t have a pure capitalist economy since that would mean that there is no government intervention in the market.

And we do have parts of the economy that are owned/run by the government as socialism would suggest.

What would you call it, if not a mix of capitalism and socialism? Maybe a mix of Capitalism and Communism would be more accurate?

This article would seem to suggest that: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economy.asp

I would argue that the very means of communist ownership relying on the state means that state capitalism is the means in which communism is reached, and the Soviet Union definitely aligned closer to that, but this is a topic of dispute with scholars.

I like how enraged you were that your comment just abruptly ends. It comes off like you were ranting in front of a microphone and got so worked up you walked away mid-rant. Just ranting down the hallway, and down the street…but we don’t hear it, because you’re away from the microphone.

It’s supposed to be in the style of those “socialism is when government does stuff” memes. That’s pretty much how all of them end

Youre thinking of laissez-faire capitalism, maybe even libertarian capitalism?

America is absolutely capitalist in every sense of the term. The entire nation is corporatized and the government has no particularly influential anti-capitalist entities. Both competing parties are capitalist. The social framework by which we raise children is structured to indoctrinate them into the ideologies of neoliberalism and American economic exceptionalism. The propaganda that American society is meritocratic is enforced throughout our entire lives, all with the aim of suppressing the class consciousness of the working class.

People are responding to you with derision because what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. Capitalism and socialism are not based entirely on hard rules. They’re both economic ideologies and social philosophies packaged into cultural frameworks. America is actively anti socialist. They have a very long history of anti communism and anti workers’ rights. America is the holotype of post-Reagan neoliberal capitalism. It is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of wealth disparity and income inequality. It is one of the least regulated economic powers in history, with it being open knowledge that billionaires rule the country and can essentially do anything they want without facing any kind of material consequences.

When I say pure capitalism, yes, I’m referring to laissez faire capitalism.

I can’t think of any countries that currently have that, and I don’t think we should want that.

Socialism is likely not the best term here, but when I’m referring to it economically I mean in the sense that the government has ownership of some businesses and is regulating other businesses as opposed to what would happen with laissez-faire capitalism.

Perhaps it is better to say that the U.S. is a mix between Capitalism (a market economy) and Communism (a command-based economy) as this article explains? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economy.asp

It is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of wealth disparity and income inequality.

That has not been my experience when visiting/living in other countries, but I am curious if you have some data to back this statement up?

Although I do agree that we have a problem with wealth disparity and income inequality.

I think we should look to other countries that have much higher levels of happiness (Such as Sweden) compared to the U.S. and try to imitate what they are doing.

Even in the case of looking to economies like what Sweden has, it is still a mixed economy. So completely doing away with capitalism is not something we should be striving for.

There is no aspect of the US that is in any sense communist. Communism refers very specifically to a style of government which directly owns and controls the means of production across all forms of industry. This style of government is controlled by the proletariat. That is not the case for any industry in the US. The link you provided is propaganda not based on any actual communist beliefs. Communism is not a “command based” anything, it is a philosophy with regards to the distribution of the means of production and how the fruits of the working class’s labor should be shared.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country

The US gini coefficient is 39.8 as of 2021. Making it one of the worst countries in the world for income inequality. There are plenty of areas in the southern states especially where entire towns are below the poverty line, some very significantly below it.

Regulated capitalism is still capitalism. There’s no such thing as “pure” or “impure” capitalism, the social relationships to capital are the same. Lassiez-faire capitalism is just a flavour of it.

It’s like ice-cream: you may prefer chocolate ice-cream over vanilla ice-cream, but they are both flavours of ice-cream and you wouldn’t say “yea, that’s not pure ice-cream”. Some people may even dislike ice-cream altogether and prefer cheesecake.

Imagine a scale, on one end is a market economy where the government does not regulate it in any way, and does not own any part of it in any way. This is pure capitalism/laissez fair capitalism, whatever you want to call it. And you are correct, it does not exist today in any country (and that’s a good thing in my opinion).

On the other end of that scale would be an economy that is completely controlled/owned/regulated by the government (for example, communism).

In economic terms, every country falls on that scale with some balance between a completely free market economy and how much regulation they impose as well as what kind of industries they control/own.

If someone is going to blame capitalism for “ruining everything” they are basically asking for a market system where everything is controlled/owned by the government. Where monopolies are rampant, and the citizens have no choice except for what the government or dictatorship has decided. In my opinion, this is also a bad choice.

If I am wrong about what they are asking for, feel free to point out the economy of a country that they are saying we should follow. In other words, if not capitalism, what are you asking for?

I’m a commie, so I’m all for social ownership of the means of production, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, there isn’t a scale of how pure capitalism is: a Keynesian model is as capitalistic as laissez-faire is because the underlying relationships to capital are the same. Communism isn’t at the other end of any scale because it’s an entirely different model, not just more or less regulation.

Some may argue that no country is socialist because they are still transitioning, and that they are still capitalist, but that’s not a scale: they are not socialist (yet, hopefully) because their mode of production is still capitalistic.

You’re downvoted, maybe because people think you promoted the current system (I don’t see that), but what you wrote is technical correct.

The US has less regulations than it used to have, but there are still rules (e.g. laws against insider trading and stock manipulation, labour laws, consumer and environmental protection etc.).

Unfortunately the existing rule are being gamed into oblivion and I’m not saying they are sufficient nor do I deny their decline. I’m just saying it could (and maybe will) be worse than now.

In America, the government intervention is whatever corporations pay politicians to say and do… it’s actually worse than pure Capitalism and they managed, through regulatory capture, to turn the government against the people or competition for their paymasters

The fact that regulations make capitalism less dangerous doesn’t mean that capitalism is fine as long as its regulated.

Hand grenades have a tonne of safety features, but you wouldn’t let your kid play with one. “Safer” isn’t the same thing as “safe”.

What would you propose as being better than the mix of capitalism and socialism that almost every country already has for their economy?

Both extremes lead to terrible outcomes.

Has any country actually TRIED anarchy? I know it sounds terrible on paper, but like…could it possibly be any worse then whatever the fuck north korea is doing? The dictator and his dogs eat very well. Nice beef meals. Whereas the citizens are more like prisoners within a country. Most never even seeing beef because it’s too expensive.

Would their lives actually be any worse off if there was just no government, no police, no military, no rules, just everybody for themselves?

Because it kind of seems like they got nothing to lose. It be an amazing case study.

There was the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. It’s not a whole country going anarchist and no doubt the limited amount of people with the nessisary skill sets to have a functioning society (judging from the food garden they set up) held back the viability of the protest, but in general the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest was widly seen as a wild failure.

It’s an interesting thing to look up on, and I’d definitely recommend anyone who is serious about anarchism to study it for the potential pit falls of an anarchist society that they would need to work out first.

“Listen, we already watered down our deadly poison a little and it’s still killing us. Unless you have a better idea we’ll just have to keep drinking deadly poison.”

I’d let my kid play with a grenade. Then again, I don’t have kids by choice, so to imply I had kids would be to imply that at some point something went terribly wrong. But rectified in the most absurd method possible.

Plus, you couldn’t go to jail for child abuse, because what parent is “double checking” that the grenade he’s playing with is in fact a toy? BECAUSE WHERE THE HELL DOES THIS 3 YEAR OLD GET A GRENADE???

That logic would track in court. A very sad, very bizzare set of circumstances. That theres no way you could blame the parent for.

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