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Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

businessinsider.com

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Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#21

Post by bogomog »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #18
vannevar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free market" is an oxymoron. Without regulation, there is no market. Market rules were among the earliest types of law. The chief problem with our current system is that capital is largely unregulated. In capitalism, wealth flows uphill, and will naturally become more and more concentrated, eventually distorting both the markets and the political system. There has to be some active mechanism to oppose this uphill fl…

In an unregulated market competitors will disrupt big business. In a regulated market big business will bribe the government and keep its monopoly, increasing inequality between the top 0.01% and the plebs.

The arc of the U.S. economy over the last 80 years contradicts your position. There has been reduced regulation since the Reagan administration, and also reduced competition. A few blips when internet companies "disrupted" an existing industry, but those industries fairly quickly consolidated on a small group of players.

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#22

Post by alchemical_piss »

The capitalists are no longer capitalists.

Somehow we went from capitalism is the best system because it most efficiently distributes scarce resources to “give us all the money and power in the world because our large language model is going to usher in Star Trek!!!”

The grifters have one. Though you could equally assign the blame to the idiots who fall for it.

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#23

Post by alchemical_piss »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #3

> That could help explain why Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist state assemblyman, won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor earlier this summer with the support of young people. My fear is that we are continuing to accelerate the younger generation toward that by doubling, tripling down on a system that isn’t working for people and punting on fixing it. We are continuing to deregulate, allow companies…

Yeah, against the ugly smug face of Cuomo I’d choose anyone else too.

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#24

Post by slater »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #3

> That could help explain why Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist state assemblyman, won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor earlier this summer with the support of young people. My fear is that we are continuing to accelerate the younger generation toward that by doubling, tripling down on a system that isn’t working for people and punting on fixing it. We are continuing to deregulate, allow companies…

> punting on fixing it

we could also make the same argument re: old folks in politics hanging on to their seats long, long after the point where they should be spending their days pushing a little white ball around the local golf course

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#25

Post by vannevar »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #18
vannevar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free market" is an oxymoron. Without regulation, there is no market. Market rules were among the earliest types of law. The chief problem with our current system is that capital is largely unregulated. In capitalism, wealth flows uphill, and will naturally become more and more concentrated, eventually distorting both the markets and the political system. There has to be some active mechanism to oppose this uphill fl…

In an unregulated market competitors will disrupt big business. In a regulated market big business will bribe the government and keep its monopoly, increasing inequality between the top 0.01% and the plebs.

You're describing regulatory capture, which is true in unregulated capitalism. When I say "unregulated capitalism", I'm not talking about business regulation---I'm talking about regulating capital itself. In a healthy, regulated capitalist system, the political influence of individual companies is diluted and there is greater competition. Business regulation is always needed to ensure things like public safety, contract enforcement, and fair competition. But when disproportionately large players politically capture the regulatory machinery, they tilt the regulatory playing field towards themselves. This is a symptom, it is not the disease.

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#26

Post by vannevar »

trod1234 wrote: post #13
vannevar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free market" is an oxymoron. Without regulation, there is no market. Market rules were among the earliest types of law. The chief problem with our current system is that capital is largely unregulated. In capitalism, wealth flows uphill, and will naturally become more and more concentrated, eventually distorting both the markets and the political system. There has to be some active mechanism to oppose this uphill fl…

We largely agree, except are you sure its capitalism that wealth flows uphill and not actually the money-printing fiat and their banker friends who are doing the debasement/stealing from everyone that holds dollars? Non-reserve Money-printing creates runaway dynamics that inevitably allow state-apparatus to outcompete legitimate business in effect collapsing market over time.

Yes, the money flows uphill. Having more wealth means being able to make more wealth, faster. It's a feedback loop. True, some of that comes from printing money. But value is actually being created all the time (which means some new money must be printed all the time), and capital will capture an ever-increasing share of the increasing pie. The rate of this increase is faster than the wealth is created. You can see this in the widening income growth gap between the top and the bottom. In turns out that a rising tide can indeed raise all boats, but it raises the boats at the top of the income curve much faster than those at the bottom, to the point where the boats at the bottom are only infinitesimally better off while the income of the rich is multiplied many times over.

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#27

Post by thunderfork »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #17

I know I'm a minority but how can you even think we live in a capitalistic society when we're taxed and regulated on everything? This crony capitalism with a big government colluding with big business is socialism with a wig on. The fact that people who define themselves anti establishment yearn for socialism because "capitalism failed" is dangerous and will mark the end of the USA minarchist experiment: even if you…

[dead]

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#29

Post by scrubs »

mindslight wrote: post #4

The problem isn't the general philosophy of capitalism per se, but rather the utter lack of failing to control or mitigate the problems of how it's currently implemented, including the now-entrenched legal indulgences that concentrated capital has bought for itself. That such criticism is often shouted down by straw manning it as "socialism" (previously "communism") is itself part of the problem. Even this article/st…

Right in absolute terms capitalism is fine. What's not fine? Corporate control without commensurate accountability at a corporate and personal level MDs and above; the fact that since Ragean corporate control has been in the ascendancy with top 5% more or less seeing all increases in net value or income.

Add on musk's trillion dollar payout proposal, no criminal prosecutions for 2008 housing crisis, cities paying for stadiums, corps ducking us taxes, offshore funds or corps for tax dodgers, and a general sense it's one set of rules for the top 5% and real reality for everyone else. Also add on us Healthcare, housing, and higher education is too expensive for the bottom 70% ... and you've got problems.

Re: Big business and capitalism are becoming less and less popular with Americans

#30

Post by sharts »

That’s because they see and realize that all the criticisms levied against alternative ways of organizing societies seem just as true about the capitalist path.

The boat is shrinking and the empire collapsing on itself. A finite world providing rise to infinite growth as ownership accelerates increasingly in the hands of the few.

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