Comments by "Nanofuture87" (@Nanofuture87) on "Can Socialists and Capitalists Find Middle Ground? | Middle Ground" video.

  1. @Yahir Hernandez A socialist complaining about corporatism is hilarious. It's literally part of socialist philosophy.
    165
  2. Not really.
    163
  3. @Yahir Hernandez You have no idea what the terms that you're using mean, do you?
    64
  4. @Yahir Hernandez Socialism is about the social ownership of the means of production. Now look up what corporatism means. I'll wait.
    62
  5. @Yahir Hernandez No. You have no idea what you're talking about. That's corporatocracy, not corporatism. Google is your friend.
    58
  6. The issue is that the lib-left ideologies are fundamentally flawed. They will either collapse into lib-right (e.g. true market mutualism) or auth-left (e.g. communism) when attempted on any sort of real scale and complexity (assuming they aren't simply conquered or otherwise destroyed first).
    35
  7. I bet he drives on public roads too! The audacity of actually participating in the system you find yourself in. Just like I bet those socialists buy things from private companies, the shame!
    33
  8. @Yahir Hernandez It's literally not the one society agrees on, don't get stubborn and double down on your error. In any case, the reason that corporatocracy arises is the state, not capitalism. The state is the ultimate monopoly which confers monopoly power: that's literally how corporations even came to be.
    30
  9.  @Carcarcarcar763  No though. A natural monopoly that managed to occur in a free market would be inherently unstable. The ones that we actually see occur are the result of government intervention. Corporations themselves are state fictions that were even granted official monopolies in the early days.
    23
  10.  @justrusty8399  I know what communism advocates for, I'm talking about what communism would actually result in.
    22
  11. Except that this isn't supposed to be a debate. It's supposed to be socialists and capitalists coming together to understand each other and see if they can find middle ground.
    22
  12.  @brog5330  I wasn't really expecting you to agree, considering your profile picture. (It's certainly true that any civilization can be conquered or destroyed, but some are going to be qualitatively easier to conquer / destroy and/or provide greater incentive for conquest / destruction than others.)
    16
  13. Cool, so you're only a socialist if you socially own the means of production with others? Also, lots of people own some of the means of production: it's called stock.
    11
  14.  @mrmarx5395  Nice double standard you've got going on there, requiring specific political ideologies for advocates of capitalism while not requiring specific political ideologies for advocates of socialism. Socialism is also a broad label that applies to many different philosophies, so if we were being consistent we would not label them as socialists but as anarchists, democratic socialists, marxist-leninists, etc.
    10
  15.  @atrece175  I don't really like speaking for others, but in general they get this idea in their head that the employer - employee relationship is exploitation, which comes from an outdated understanding of value.
    6
  16.  @thanos8638  "Anything that isn't communist propaganda is alt-right propaganda"
    6
  17.  @rean2276  As opposed to useful idiots for socialist systems.
    6
  18. Nobody completely understands the entirety of capitalism. That's part of the premise: no individual can know enough to implement a central plan, so each individual just plans for themselves.
    5
  19.  @Maksie0  Yeah see, that's not voluntary, that's coercion, and it's what socialists engage in all the time when they argue for more programs funded through taxation or for seizing the means of production by force. If you don't want to sell your labor, your alternative is to be either self-sufficient or rely on the charity of others. Everything else is selling your labor. People who are self-employed are still selling their labor. People who are employed at worker coops are still selling their labor. To get something of value from others, you provide something of value in exchange.
    5
  20.  @Maksie0  Who decides what the "full value" of your labor is if not the buyer and seller? If the worker valued their labor higher than the compensation offered, then they wouldn't agree to the exchange and would instead seek to sell their labor elsewhere. Business owners are not roaming the streets picking up workers at gunpoint, workers come in and apply for jobs with business owners. Capitalism at its most fundamental is just voluntary exchange in a system that recognizes property rights.
    5
  21. Right... because when your goal is to change people's minds to support a different system, the way to do that is to be an arrogant ass yeah? Mimi got all of 2,704 votes when he ran for President.
    5
  22. It's so annoying that socialists don't want to deal with real facts that depict what happens after socialist revolutions. Socialism is inherently at odds with individual liberty.
    5
  23. See you on the battlefield I guess.
    5
  24.  @mrmarx5395   Which definition you are going by is driven by opinion and you clearly wanted to share your opinion on how these terms should be used. Also, as you admitted yourself, not all proponents of capitalism are neoliberals and you failed to address how socialism encompasses a wide range of different philosophies.
    5
  25. @Albert Whisker  False equivalence and also not true. Each individual makes their own decisions under capitalism: even the wealthiest of billionaires cannot force the poorest of the homeless to act against their will.
    4
  26.  @Maksie0  That's not what's happening though. Nothing is being "taken" in capitalism. The business owner is paying workers for their labor and those workers voluntarily agree to sell their labor. Both parties believe that they are benefiting from this exchange or else it wouldn't happen. It is instead socialists who seek to take and/or control the fruit of people's labor, dictating to people what they can and cannot do.
    4
  27. No, rather it is government which is a parasitism that divides people into antagonistic classes. People fundamentally are not equal and can never be equal. People come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes and have different aptitudes and coincidental circumstances. Attempting to force equality is harmful and counter-productive. In that people are equal, we are all equally human beings with the same human rights. There is nothing unjust about the unequal outcomes which result from people freely exercising their just rights. Rather than being the highest stage of development of society, communism is a reversion to a more primitive mode of existence reminiscent of our distant ancestors.
    4
  28.  @mrmarx5395  ​ By which definition you go is a matter of opinion because words do not have objective meaning. Declaring that your usage is "right" and other usage is "wrong" is simply an opinion. Others might share that opinion with you, but it is still just an opinion. Where in your previous explanation did you address that socialism encompasses a wide range of different philosophies?
    4
  29. "Do capitalists share?" Yes. Americans gave about $450 billion to charity in 2019. That's in addition to all the money "shared" through taxation.
    4
  30.  @suicidecandy  Communism and fascism both argue for the subjugation of the individual to the collective and foster murderous intent towards the perceived enemy collective. Replace race with class and fascist writings will look appealing to a lot of communists.
    3
  31.  @Maksie0  We are a social species, but our ancient ancestors definitely competed with each other in groups and it was for mutual benefit, not the greater whole. Think about it, do most humans think of bettering the greater whole when looking for mates or are they trying to benefit themselves and pass on their own genes?
    3
  32. Government intervention. Look up things like redlining.
    3
  33. Fun fact: social democracy is still capitalism. The Nordic countries are all capitalist.
    3
  34. Out lives are the best in human history under capitalism.
    3
  35. Global poverty rates have pretty consistently dropped over time.
    3
  36. Part of the problem is that socialism is very nebulous and encompasses a lot of different political and economic philosophies, from anarchism to democratic socialism to marxist leninism. The thing they have in common is the social ownership of the means of production, which contrasts with the private ownership of the means of production with capitalism... which is what liberalism espouses.
    3
  37.  @Maksie0  Because that's the reality of socialism. It doesn't matter if you're anti-authoritarian, socialism results in authoritarianism.
    3
  38. The socialists can just rant into the echo chamber as usual.
    3
  39.  @99oilers55  European countries aren't socialist.
    3
  40.  @99oilers55  Norway isn't socialist. It's a capitalist economy with strong unions and social safety nets / programs.
    3
  41. The childishness of socialists is really quite something to behold. Don't worry though, you're free to believe in bad ideas like socialism in the liberal world in which we live.
    3
  42. Socialism is quite possibly the most insidiously evil philosophy of modern times. At least when fascism was demonstrated to be monstrous, its followers had to slink into the shadows and hide for fear of being discovered for what they are. Socialism has been repeatedly demonstrated to be monstrous, yet people still proudly walk around calling themselves socialist. It's incredible.
    3
  43.  @rean2276  Hey, if you want to get pedantic about how the capitalist label is being used, then let's get pedantic.
    3
  44. Capitalism is easily defensible. It's socialism that's fundamentally flawed. Value is subjective, voluntary exchange is mutually beneficial, theft and slavery are both unjust.
    3
  45. @m. a. You don't have to listen to them exclusively, you can also look at historical record. Socialism is garbage.
    3
  46. @Albert Whisker  Nonsense. It's only subsidizing the employer in the presence of welfare programs that make it that way, which is its own issue. Declaring that it must be a waste of time is just arrogance on your part. Gaining experience to be able to get a higher paying job in the future is valuable in itself and even a job that doesn't pay a "living wage" can be used to fund education, which is something that I did myself. My first job didn't pay a "living wage" and I did not need it to. Stop trying to force people to act the way you think they should act and let them make their own decisions based on their own circumstances.
    3
  47. I'm sure you're leading by example, right? You've sold everything you own beyond the bare minimum to sustain your life and have dedicated yourself to serving others, yes?
    2
  48. Yeah, the lions and the gazelles are really cooperating. Nature is really a mix of both cooperation and competition. We cooperate because it is mutually beneficial, but within that cooperation we are also competing for things like resources and status and mates.
    2
  49. Are human beings owned by the people collectively, or do we each own ourselves to pursue our own interests?
    2
  50.  @Maksie0  Why should that be scary? It's an easy conclusion to make when you compare the various systems. Look at what happens to people under feudalism, fascism, socialism, etc. and compare with capitalism. If you value individual liberty and improving the conditions of humanity, the choice is clear.
    2
  51. I'm no fan of communism, but that act is nonsense. It's poorly written and clearly unconstitutional. Enforcing unconstitutional laws is a violation of the oaths people take to support and defend the Constitution.
    2
  52.  @googleaccount-yk1zt  Garbage. Voluntary exchange isn't exploitation. Both parties believe there is benefit to themselves or else the exchange will not occur. If you think that your employer is offering nothing of value and your labor is simply being exploited, then quit and work for yourself.
    2
  53. What a person believes and how a person acts are what actually matter about them. I would never call for someone to be killed for their beliefs, but I'm not going to pretend to be sad when someone who advocates something that I find to be monstrous dies.
    2
  54.  @maddi5672  Stalin would send you to the gulag for homosexual behavior, and things haven't really gotten all that much better in the modern socialist countries. If you are LGBT+, you are much better off in liberal countries than socialist ones.
    2
  55. How can you not? Look at the world before capitalism and then look at the world today.
    2
  56. For creating a platform where socialists have an opportunity to speak?
    2
  57. The US spends way, way more on the military than is necessary. We do not need to be in endless wars in multiple counties. We do not need military bases around the world. The US accounts for 37% of global military spending, more than the next seven largest military budgets combined. It's absurd.
    2
  58.  @jinglejangle100  That doesn't make sense. I might want to sell my used car for a million dollars, but that doesn't really matter if no one wants to buy my used car for a million dollars. Either the offer that I get from a buyer is worth more to me than the car and I sell or it isn't and I don't sell. The same goes for workers. Either the employer is offering compensation worth more to the worker than their labor and they sell or it isn't and they don't sell. By selling, they are demonstrating that the compensation is more valuable to them than their labor.
    2
  59.  @deandra4340   Look at the world today under capitalism and compare it to the world a few centuries ago before capitalism. Capitalism does work. Socialism will never be "done right." Beyond the inefficiency and incentive problems, at its core socialism is at odds with individual rights.
    2
  60. Because a socialist made a video about this video, so his followers flooded into the comments.
    2
  61. Yet capitalists are still winning in the real world 😘
    2
  62. Look at things from the consumer perspective, which includes everyone. Business owners and workers aren't producing goods and services just for the sake of it, they're producing them to be consumed.
    2
  63. @Albert Whisker  An employer is never "entitled" to someone's time and effort just as would-be employees aren't "entitled" to a job. Employment is mutually voluntary and you have no business forcing people to charge a certain amount for their labor. My first job didn't pay a "living wage" and that was perfectly fine because it was worth it to me to do it anyway.
    2
  64.  @yaflah6484  Capitalism has resulted in the greatest lifting of people out of poverty that the world has ever seen.
    2
  65.  @yaflah6484  In 1964 the poverty rate was 19%. Look globally and the numbers are startling, with over a billion people lifted out of extreme poverty in the past 25 years alone.
    2
  66. Socialism is driven by arrogance and envy.
    2
  67. You're suffering from blatant in-group bias.
    2
  68.  @BYCloe-u  Depends on what you mean by a private company. There are worker coops out there, people who are self-employed, and if you wanted to you could move to a commune.
    2
  69. How do you intend to provide a social safety net without taking away private property from people? Capitalism isn't opposed to regulating bad practices, in fact you have to have some sort of system in place to regulate bad practices in order to have a free market. Contracts need to be enforced and the use of force and fraud need to be prohibited. The issue comes when you start saying that people's voluntary interactions are "bad practices" and set about prohibiting those.
    2
  70.  @Maksie0  Try advocating for capitalism in a socialist country. See what happens.
    2
  71.  @Maksie0  I'm aware of the concept, I'm talking about the reality. If you really didn't have authoritarianism in your socialism, like a true market mutualist, then capitalism is going to win because the labor theory of value is false.
    2
  72. Really? You can look at the 20th century and wonder how people find socialism to be bad?
    2
  73. "The majority of americans support a living wage, a green new deal, M4A, taxing the rich. etc" I hear people keep saying that, but reality does not bear it out. We see repeatedly that polling / surveys are basically a junk science that at best give you a rough idea and at worst are totally misleading. What actually matters is how people vote. Bernie Sanders lost the popular vote in the primary (with 26% compared to Biden's 51%) and, while Biden did win, Trump still managed to get 47% of the popular vote even though he's staunchly opposed to all of those things.
    2
  74. If you want to go that route, forget the debate bros altogether and just have economists. Wolff and Epstein are fine, lose the rest.
    2
  75.  @thanos8638  False. The worker who stocks the grocery store shelves gets paid regardless of when or even if those goods sell.
    2
  76. Nazism isn't banned. Nothing should be banned since no one should have the power to do the banning.
    2
  77. That would explain the recent comments.
    2
  78.  @thanos8638  Except for the boots of guys like Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc.
    2
  79.  @thanos8638  They didn't free anyone, they just put them under the boot of new masters.
    2
  80.  @thanos8638  That's rich coming from a communist.
    2
  81.  @thanos8638  Actual communism, as in a stateless, moneyless, classless society is still utopian. Marxist Leninists will never bring it about. Marxism itself is fundamentally flawed, based on misunderstandings of economics and a faulty view of history and nature.
    2
  82.  @Maksie0  To put it simply, it's necessary for a planned economy. People being free to do as they will messes up whatever production / distribution system is employed to replace the price system, so their lives must be controlled to have any hope of getting it to work.
    2
  83. Humanity at large has been the beneficiary of capitalism. Compare the conditions of people now to the conditions of people even a few centuries ago.
    2
  84.  @krasmasov6852  It certainly doesn't seem like I've been failing, but I can understand why you might tell yourself that as a psychological defense mechanism.
    2
  85.  @krasmasov6852  You're perfectly at liberty to tell yourself that if you like. Do you have an actual argument?
    2
  86.  @krasmasov6852  Neither employer nor worker uses force or threats of force to compel the other to take action. There is no coercion. If you wish to redefine coercion such that it would include the worker-employer relationship, I think you'll find you run into problems.
    2
  87.  @krasmasov6852  That doesn't describe the worker-employer relationship. The employer does not lock the worker in a cage and threaten them with starvation unless they work. Rather the worker, as a human being, has a certain biology which will result in starvation unless they get food. The ways to get food are to (a) grow your own, (b) find unowned food and homestead it, (c) get food owned by others via their charity, or (d) get food owned by others by exchanging something that others value, such as your labor. There is no coercion.
    2
  88.  @krasmasov6852  "Are you for real" Like I said, if you attempt to redefine coercion I think you will run into problems. "They have no land." Some workers have land, or do you claim that all workers are property-less? "Unowned food? Like what?" Like a fish in the ocean. "We all know how reliable that is" Reliability isn't at issue here, only that it is an option. There are no guarantees in life. "they can exchange their labor since none of the other options you listed are feasible for the average person" Plenty of average people engage in all of those options. "Therefore, they're stuck under whatever labor conditions they can get." Reverse the argument. The employer requires workers in order to cover their own costs and ultimately to exchange for things like food to sustain themselves. By your reasoning, the workers are engaging in coercion against the employers who must take whatever conditions they can get. This is silliness.
    2
  89. ​ @krasmasov6852  "Most workers don't." Yet some do and still choose to work rather than be self-sufficient. Why is that? "You can't fish and hunt for food while working 70 hour weeks and having an entire family to feed." Who made you have a family to feed? Who made you work 70 hours per week? No one. These are choices that you made. "We have enough food to feed a world of 10 billion people. Why can't it be a guarantee?" Because the coercion that you would engage in to make it a guarantee would undermine the very reason why we have so much food in the first place, in addition to being fundamentally unjust in and of itself. "Reversing the argument will never work for me, bro." I mean, if you want to be intellectually dishonest. "Anything less than giving their employees equal ownership of the business makes me think of them as nothing but labor exploiters who are enemies to be defeated." You can certainly view them that way, but it's baseless. The real enemies to be defeated are the advocates of coercion, theft, and slavery like you. "Making it harder for someone to exploit labor isn't coercion." It is if you're using coercive force to do so. Riddle me this: if people needing to eat in order to not starve to death results in coercion, why is it that the farmers who grow and ultimately control the basic food supply do not charge extremely high prices and become the wealthiest people on the planet, reducing everyone else to utter poverty? Instead the government gives them subsidies because supposedly they don't make enough. What is going on here? The answer is rather simple: competition is going on. Consumers prefer cheaper food to more expensive food all else being equal. A farmer who attempts to impose arbitrarily high prices will fail. The same goes for employers. Employers are in competition with each other. Employers who attempt to impose arbitrarily low wages will fail.
    2
  90.  @arthurmorgan1550  No, they don't occur as a result of capitalism. One group of people going to war to steal resources from another group of people is as old as mankind. Free trade greatly reduces this as it's more cost effective to simply trade for what you want than to go to war over it. The military industrial complex is a result of government interventionism, not capitalism. Similarly, human beings enslaving their fellow human beings is a historical reality. Capitalism greatly reduces and eliminates slavery where free markets are allowed as slave labor cannot compete with free labor. Where you see slavery tend to occur is again the result of governments, whether it's from dictators exploiting their populations or from governments outlawing things like sex work.
    2
  91.  @jbelli211  Tribes were essentially extended family units and they would compete with other tribes for resources. Humanity did not just get along.
    2
  92.  @jbelli211  I do not mean free as in zero cost. I mean free as in the labor of free men, not slaves.
    2
  93.  @bobwilson3780  Billion, with a B. The power isn't in the hands of the few, it's in the hands of everyone. Every person ultimately controls their own lives. What socialists don't seem to understand about democracy is that it is supposed to be as limited as possible. When you wake up and get dressed, you decide what to wear. We don't put it to a vote.
    2
  94.  @maddi5672  You are never forced to take a job under capitalism. Business owners are not roaming the streets picking people up and chaining them down. People come to them and ask for a job, both employer and employee agreeing to the terms of employment. Capitalism is the compassionate system, the system that has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty and doubled the human lifespan over the past century. Wealth is not a zero-sum game, both parties in a voluntary exchange are benefiting by getting something that they view as more valuable, with people acting in their own interest resulting in societal benefits that they don't even intend. On the other hand, socialists often have noble intentions, but then they impose authoritarian control, actually stealing from people and imprisoning or murdering anyone who dares to suggest that they are wrong.
    2
  95. So you moved away from the position that at least has many working examples and towards the position that has repeatedly failed. Okay.
    2
  96.  @alix9751  There's what you want and then there's what actually happens. We've seen what happens. We've seen it repeatedly. You get authoritarian regimes that crack down on civil liberties and an economy that doesn't function and has to either reform back to markets or collapse.
    2
  97.  @alix9751  I didn't assume that you're a tankie. Whether you are a tankie or not, socialism left unchecked devolves into authoritarianism. It's a result of how socialism interacts with the reality of the world. I don't disregard idealism, but Marxism is fundamentally false. It's wrong both in theory as well as in practice.
    2
  98.  @alix9751  That's true, socialism isn't communism. Communism has never really existed unless maybe you count 'primitive communism.' All of the states under the control of communist parties have been socialist at most. Saying that Chile in 1932 worked when it lasted for a matter of months is quite a stretch. Marxist economics is based on the labor theory of value, which is how he got ideas like exploitation of surplus value. This concept has been obsolete for over a century, replaced by the subjective theory of value. There are also issues like the economic calculation problem which was also raised over a century ago now.
    2
  99.  @alix9751  You can't though. The state can set prices, that much is true, but that doesn't mean that's the value, which is why things like price floors and ceilings cause problems. Individuals determine the value of things based on their own knowledge and subjective preferences. Markets work by conveying this information through price signals, allowing for rational allocation of resources. A central planner cannot do this on any sort of real scale as they lack this information.
    2
  100. What tends to happen when minimum wage is increased is that job opportunities for the less educated and experienced decrease. They get priced out of the job market and the small businesses that would have hired them go under.
    2
  101.  @Maksie0  The lords and mercantilists did their best to keep the status quo, but the demonstrably superior capitalism smashed them. Sure co-ops do exist and they are perfectly welcome to exist under capitalism, but the fact that they don't dominate the economy is evidence that it's not superior.
    2
  102. You're right in that socialism without capitalism is doomed to failure, but capitalism can get along just fine without socialism. The best way to help the poor is with economic growth, and of course things like charity and mutual aid are perfectly compatible with capitalism.
    2
  103.  @mrmoth26  "Corporatism is a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "human body". The hypothesis that society will reach a peak of harmonious functioning when each of its divisions efficiently performs its designated function, such as a body's organs individually contributing its general health and functionality, lies at the center of corporatist theory. Corporatism does not refer to a political system dominated by large business interests, even though the latter are commonly referred to as "corporations" in modern American legal and pop cultural parlance; instead, the correct term for this theoretical system would be corporatocracy."
    1
  104.  @mrmoth26  "Socialism is when the MoP is owned by the workers using it" Socialism is when the MoP are socially owned. "corporatism is capitalistic and requires private ownership of the MoP." False.
    1
  105.  @mrmoth26  "Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element." I couldn't care less what you think the "correct" definition of socialism is. "corporatism can not arise in socialism." Sure it can.
    1
  106.  @mrmoth26  Fun how you just posted a definition other than the one you gave. If you have a problem with the definition in common usage that is used by dictionaries and encyclopedias, then take it up with them. Your personal definition means nothing to me. "Corporatism can't rise in socialism." Yes, it can.
    1
  107.  @mrmoth26  If you don't like wikipedia, how about Britannica? "Socialism, social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources ... This fundamental conviction nevertheless leaves room for socialists to disagree among themselves with regard to two key points. The first concerns the extent and the kind of property that society should own or control ... The second disagreement concerns the way in which society is to exercise its control of property and other resources. In this case the main camps consist of loosely defined groups of centralists and decentralists. On the centralist side are socialists who want to invest public control of property in some central authority, such as the state—or the state under the guidance of a political party, as was the case in the Soviet Union. Those in the decentralist camp believe that decisions about the use of public property and resources should be made at the local, or lowest-possible, level by the people who will be most directly affected by those decisions. This conflict has persisted throughout the history of socialism as a political movement."
    1
  108.  @mrmoth26  My definition was "Socialism is when the MoP are socially owned." Your definition was "Socialism is when the MoP is owned by the workers using it." Now, whose definition there does Britannica actually agree with?
    1
  109.  @suicidecandy  History tells us a different story. If you ask a fascist, they will rarely say that they want to murder other races. They'll just say that they want to "secure a homeland for their people" and that this would be better for everyone. The reality is something very different, just like the reality of attempting to bring about communism is something very different from the propaganda that communists will tell you. Seizing the means of production and suppressing counter-revolutionary thought is bloody business.
    1
  110.  @Maksie0  They're both illiberal collectivist ideologies with shared roots that rose to prominence in the 20th century and subsequently failed.
    1
  111.  @delzerui4975  Err... no? None of those characteristics apply to liberalism. It's not illiberal, it's not collectivist, it didn't rise to prominence in the 20th century, and it didn't fail.
    1
  112.  @delzerui4975  It remains the dominant global ideology. Proto-socialist ideas have been around forever, but the developed socialism that gained power and influence in the 20th century came after what we identify as liberalism. Fascism is extremely collectivist.
    1
  113.  @delzerui4975  Liberalism is an entire ideology. Capitalism is the economic system associated with it.
    1
  114.  @delzerui4975  Fascism isn't narrow either, it covers a range of political philosophies (if you want to be generous enough to consider them philosophies).
    1
  115. That would just confuse socialism and social democracy even more.
    1
  116. Incidentally, your username is false.
    1
  117.  Sic Semper Tyrannis  No, overreaching government is what's hurting America.
    1
  118.  Sic Semper Tyrannis   The only control that is justified is protecting individual rights. More than that slides into authoritarianism and tyranny. Public education has actually become a vector for socialism.
    1
  119.  Sic Semper Tyrannis  I mean, fascists are against both socialism and capitalism, so simply being against socialism isn't sufficient.
    1
  120. The system we currently live in didn't result from capitalism, it resulted from cronyism, from the state having the power to grant special favors to certain people.
    1
  121.  @h.hholmes3118  Still no real response I see.
    1
  122.  @h.hholmes3118  Not necessarily. Capitalism is an economic system, it doesn't really tell you anything about the political system. Just like how socialism can range all the way from anarchists to marxist-leninists, so too does capitalism cover a wide range.
    1
  123.  @h.hholmes3118  "depending on which branch" Socialists can hate other socialists just like capitalists can hate other capitalists. Most American conservatives are capitalists, sure, though their talk of small government isn't exactly consistent.
    1
  124.  @Maksie0  It's not a matter of whether or not you "like" your job. It's a matter of whether or not the job is valuable to you, which it clearly is or else you would quit. If wage labor was exploitation, if employers were simply taking value from you and not providing value to you in return, then people really would just quit. It's not as though this is only true of poor people either, people with plenty of savings and high paying jobs continue to work at those high paying jobs rather than quit.
    1
  125.  @Maksie0  I'm not ignoring economic realities, I'm stating them, which you confirm yourself when you say that having a job is better than no job. If employers were not providing value, then it would not be true that having a job is better than no job. You would simply live on your own labor which you would be reaping the full benefit from without having the employer taking your surplus value.
    1
  126.  @Maksie0  Are they? I'd rather be starving in the wilderness than be a slave. That's the thing about slavery: it's involuntary. On the other hand, employment is voluntary.
    1
  127.  @Maksie0  Yes it is, and again, if employers were not providing value then the alternative wouldn't be destitution.
    1
  128. @Albert Whisker Interesting that you would talk about a company buying resources from a government to obtain a monopoly and then say the problem there is the company and not the government for having the power to create the monopoly in the first place.
    1
  129.  @arthurmorgan1550  A couple points. 1. Not having a job doesn't imply that you will starve. Charity and welfare are both things that can and do exist in capitalist systems. 2. The analogy doesn't hold up. Your body metabolizing food to survive is a natural state. There is no agent imposing starvation onto you.
    1
  130.  @arthurmorgan1550   Ideally, yes, libertarians want to abolish welfare, though many of us are realists about it and want to reform welfare instead. Regardless, capitalism and libertarianism are not equivalent. Capitalist systems can run the gamut from very libertarian to extremely authoritarian. I didn't miss what your point was with the analogy, I pointed out how your analogy fails. You don't necessarily die without a wage and no one is holding a gun to your head. There is no coercive action occuring. There is no individual that you can point to and say they are starving you.
    1
  131.  @arthurmorgan1550  Sure, there are plenty of places where conditions are harsh relative to what we have become accustomed to in developed countries, but developed countries became developed because they went through those harsh conditions. People move to cities and agree to work in sweatshops because it's better than what they had before out in rural areas. They voluntarily choose the hard work and harsh conditions because it is bettering their lot in life. It is the point. You can repeat your analogy as many times as you wish, but my response doesn't change.
    1
  132.  @arthurmorgan1550  You're just repeating the premise that I've already argued against. The concept of exploitation of surplus value is bogus. The labor theory of value is not true as value is instead subjective.
    1
  133.  @zubairkhan1439  Soviet Union collapsed, China had to enact economic reforms to bring in more capitalism, Cuba is facing much the same, North Korea is sad and pathetic. The record is clear: capitalist markets work, socialist planning does not. In that there are problems which occur in capitalist countries, it is invariably the result of attempts at economic planning. As for inequality, sure, there will be economic inequality. That is to be expected, yet the conditions of the relative poor still improve, with billions having been brought out of extreme poverty and the human lifespan being doubled over the past century. Things which would have been inconceivable luxuries for the wealthy are now commonplace even for those of modest means.
    1
  134. Capitalists don't steal anything from workers. Capitalists buy labor from workers who voluntarily sell that labor. The labor theory of value is over a century out of date.
    1
  135. It's more like you can learn about socialism in a liberal system because we believe in freedom of speech and the free marketplace of ideas.
    1
  136. You could argue that they were wrong about it, but there most certainly is such a thing as human nature. Humans have a certain biology that results in certain shared characteristics. To say that humans don't have a nature would be like saying gold doesn't have a nature.
    1
  137. It's an anti-spam measure. That happens when you post comment after comment.
    1
  138. Your facts look an awful lot like opinions.
    1
  139.  @KellieandKimbra  Another opinion.
    1
  140.  @whte9201  and what?
    1
  141.  @whte9201  So you shouldn't claim that your opinions are facts.
    1
  142.  @whte9201  What OP is saying is just opinions.
    1
  143.  @whte9201  It literally is not.
    1
  144.  @krasurii  Colonialism and capitalism are not equivalent.
    1
  145. In that case they should have sent actual economists for the capitalist side, then the socialists would just look silly.
    1
  146.  @abdiweliyusuf3929  No, we don't. The idea that Russia or China are going to invade the US or even attack the US is delusional. In that there are tensions, the existence of our bases is a contributing factor.
    1
  147.  @abdiweliyusuf3929  Not our problem. The US should not be the world police. If you want to help the people of Taiwan, by all means go over there as a private individual to help.
    1
  148.  @abdiweliyusuf3929  At the expense of our own. Our ever expanding military doesn't just affect people around the world, it affects us too. The welfare-warfare state is incredibly corrupt and continuously eroding our civil liberties. The way to spread liberty is not through military force in foreign countries, it's through being a shining beacon of an example. You show the people of China why liberty is a good thing and then you won't need to defend Taiwan because the CCP will be torn down.
    1
  149.  @abdiweliyusuf3929  You don't have to look away. There are all sorts of things that you could do. The key word there is you. It is not the role of the government to be messing about in the affairs of other countries. Again, the idea that the American mainland would be bombed "any minute" is just delusional, paranoia spread by neocons to further their own corrupt agenda. It is not the role of the US to keep the USSR from invading Europe. It is not the role of the US to help Kuwait repel Iraqi forces. It is not the role of the US to prevent North Korea from invading South Korea. It is not the role of the US to be the world police.
    1
  150.  @krasmasov6852  They don't have to agree to anything and they're the ones who want the services that are sending them bills in the first place. That sort of logic would apply the other way around as well: business owners have their own costs and they need workers. Workers can and do bid potential employers against each other.
    1
  151. @Anonymous "Winning" a debate is a somewhat silly concept, but there have been multiple debates between capitalists and socialists where there was an actual method to determine a winner and the capitalist won.
    1
  152. @Anonymous Compared to how many capitalists who have won Nobel prizes in economics? Marxist economics is heterodox for a reason.
    1
  153. @Anonymous Also, what source do you have that these three were Marxists?
    1
  154. @Anonymous For starters, Marxist economics still holds to the labor theory of value whereas mainstream neoclassical economics switched to the subjective theory of value over a century ago. Marxists are a lot like Christian fundamentalists, always saying that the revolution or the apocalypse is coming, but it's not.Marx predicted that the revolution was going to come in the advanced capitalist societies, but instead it occurred in countries that were essentially still in feudalism and then either collapsed or instituted market reforms because Marxist economics simply isn't correct. His ideas along with Engels' have long been debunked.
    1
  155. @Anonymous It's certainly true that the labor theory of value was part of classical economics, but Marx used it when he was developing his theories. That's where the notion of exploitation of surplus value comes from. To say that he was just a critic of capitalism is a pretty gross understatement and his predictions about capitalism aren't true either. They have in fact failed, which is why the revolution never came.
    1
  156. @Anonymous The "petty bourgeois" or the middle class as we more commonly know it today, has not suffered the most or disappeared under capitalism. Quite the contrary, to speak of the US, small businesses account for almost all businesses and they employ nearly half of private sector workers. In addition, over half of the US population owns stock, making them part owners of the means of production. Marx predicted that the middle class would vanish and we would be left with a stark divide between the hyper wealthy capitalists and the increasingly impoverished workers, but that isn't what happened. While it is certainly true that capitalists have become hyper wealthy, the workers have also become wealthier in absolute terms, a result of wealth not being a zero sum game. The livings conditions of the majority of people on the planet are improving rather than worsening. We could argue about whether capitalism is unstable, how what you call economic failures attributable to capitalism are actually the result of government intervention, or whether reforms of capitalism with the creation of the welfare system and of various worker's rights have failed, but fundamentally the material conditions that Marx thought would drive revolution haven't come about. We know that Marx's predictions can't have come true because his predicted revolution hasn't happened.
    1
  157. @Anonymous 1. Small businesses make up over 99% of American firms. 2. See above. 3. Capitalism isn't a zero sum game as observable by the reduction in poverty globally and the increases in wages observed before 1980. To say that the relative poor of today aren't better off than the relative poor of the early 1800s is simply ignoring reality. 4. No. You can have instabilities in various sectors under capitalism, but systemic instability is the result of government intervention sending false price signals. 5. If capitalism will fall because every system falls, then it would be the case that socialism / communism will fall as well, and the system after that, and the system after that, ad infinitum. I'm not going to say that capitalism can't fall. Perhaps one day the world or humanity will fundamentally change in such a way that capitalism no longer makes sense, but I will say that the reasons Marx gives are observably not correct. If you want to hold to the unfalsifiable claim that the lack of a revolution so far just means that the revolution is going to come at some point in the future, then there's nothing I can do about that other than point out its unfalsifiability.
    1
  158. ​ @sohamdutta5315  1. Googling it shows that entrepreneurship has increased, an upward trend over the past several years with 320 out of 100,000 adults becoming entrepreneurs in 2018. The pandemic has also seen a surge of entrepreneurship. 2. Monopolies in reality are fueled by government regulation creating artificial barriers to market entry along with subsidies / bailouts of established businesses. If a natural monopoly were to actually occur, this wouldn't even be a problem as the threat of competition would always remain. 3. Yes, Marx said that capitalism has greatly increased wealth / productive forces. Whereas Marx says that the relationship between the workers and owners under capitalism is antagonistic, a class struggle, reality shows it to be mutually beneficial. 4. Government interference is the problem. Yes, capitalists agree that a business cycle exists. No one is disputing that: the question is why it exists. Unsurprisingly, capitalists reject the explanation offered by Marxian economics where it's the result of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. It's also unsurprising that governments liked the Keynesian explanation that they should spend more during a bust (though they don't like the flip side where they need to spend less during the boom). 5. He kind of was though. Rather than everything being decided by the movements of the planets, in dialectical materialism / historical materialism everything is decided by material conditions. His grand theory of human history is nonsense just like astrology is nonsense, and being fuzzy about the details so as to be unfalsifiable is also a hallmark of astrology. As for young people hating capitalism or liking socialism, I'd wager most young people don't even know what those things actually are. They hear capitalism and think cronyism and hear socialism and think things like universal healthcare. In any event, young people supporting things like socialism and then abandoning that support as they grow older is a common trend. The conservatives of today were the hippies of yesterday.
    1
  159.  @sohamdutta5315  Well I don't know what to tell you other than having a discussion over the course of days is tedious especially when you aren't really saying much of substance. 1. If you want to present data then we can talk about what's going on. I'll give you a little hint: there's a reason why growth in real wages slowed compared to overall economic productivity starting in the 1970s. 2. It really doesn't, and again, even if it did that's not a problem. 3. The existence of inequality doesn't mean that there is a struggle going on. 4. As already stated, sectors of the economy can have downturns, but the systemic issues that we observe to occur are the result of government interference. 5. Ah yes, because rule by AI definitely isn't a dystopian Sci-Fi concept. I've got a better idea: let's not be ruled at all. How about we be free instead and interact voluntarily with one another?
    1
  160.  @sohamdutta5315  The only way to really find out would be to establish a voluntary society. You could set up your commune or whatever inside it, and we'll see how many people choose to join you of their own accord and how that works out for you.
    1
  161. Working together to better fulfill your own selfish desires is still selfish.
    1
  162. I'm not aware of any price ceilings for labor in the US. There are price floors yes, but not ceilings.
    1
  163.  @jinglejangle100  Then what mechanism is artificially suppressing labor prices?
    1
  164.  @jinglejangle100  Of course they do. Workers bargain all the time.
    1
  165.  @jinglejangle100  What's that have to do with anything? Have you considered that the average unskilled worker's labor might not be worth a "living wage"? We observe that workers can and do bargain, so clearly they have the power to, and I'm not aware of a law prohibiting bargaining or enabling employers to force people to work for them.
    1
  166.  @jinglejangle100  The average unskilled worker clearly doesn't assume the same amount of risk in the business as the owner and the average unskilled worker also has a higher time preference than the owner does. If each employee was adding as much value as the owner then they would be getting paid the same, but they aren't getting paid the same because they don't. The physical demands of a job do not correspond to that job being more valuable, or else being a ditchdigger would pay more than being a lawyer. The workers themselves clearly believe that the compensation offered is more valuable than their labor or else they wouldn't accept it and there is not a monopsony for labor to buy at below market prices.
    1
  167.  @jinglejangle100  How do you determine how much something is worth? By how much willing buyers and sellers exchange it for. Value is subjective.
    1
  168.  @jinglejangle100  (I don't see it, no) Voluntary exchange occurs when both parties value what the other party is offering more than what they are offering in exchange. If a worker did not value their compensation more than their labor, they wouldn't agree to it. They are demonstrating by agreeing that the compensation is in fact worth more to them than their labor. Prices are not value per se, but the result of many exchanges occurring over time. If you want to say that the market is distorted from government interference then I would agree with you. The answer is to stop interfering.
    1
  169. @Rayyan Ali The poor have also benefited greatly from market growth, with the poor of today being quite a bit wealthier than the poor of centuries past. Employment is a voluntary transaction in capitalism, and if an employer can replace an employee with someone able to do the same work and willing to do it at a lower price, then they probably should. It is only under capitalism that you are a person, an individual. Under socialism you are just part of the collective working for the greater good, a cog in the machine.
    1
  170.  @skair5425  The difference is that Trump is a populist and told people what they already wanted to hear.
    1
  171.  @thanos8638  Because socialists totally aren't known for using the police and military to subjugate people in the name of bringing about socialism. Nope, definitely not. Government police and military are the tools of rulers, some of whom are capitalists, not the "capitalist class."
    1
  172.  @thanos8638  Socialists use police and army to crush dissent and further their own power. Capitalists use police and army to crush dissent and further their own power. It's almost like they are tools of whoever happens to be in power to crush dissent and further their own power. P.S. Socialists are also imperialists.
    1
  173.  @thanos8638  Then the workers themselves will be under the boot of the ruling socialists. Anyone who complains is an enemy of the revolution and gets a nice trip to the gulag. Just trading one ruler for another and getting an awful economic system in the process. Socialists literally have been imperialists. I don't know what twisted logic you have to deny that Soviet Russia was an imperialist power, but it definitely was.
    1
  174.  @thanos8638  I'm not the one licking the boots of socialist dictators. Oppression is oppression regardless of the label one uses with the oppressor. You know what's worse than falling for red scare propaganda? Falling for socialist propaganda.
    1
  175.  @thanos8638  Coming from a Marxist-Leninist, I'll take that as a compliment. Your takes are so contrary to reality as to be absurd to anyone who isn't totally blinded by propaganda.
    1
  176.  @thanos8638  You're clearly an authoritarian socialist from your talking points. Whether you identify as a ML or not, you might as well be one. You are evil.
    1
  177.  @thanos8638  Amusingly enough, I actually do agree that all socialists are authoritarian at their core. You want to steal and murder. You're evil.
    1
  178.  @thanos8638  You're welcome. Fortunately for you, I believe in liberty, so you can continue to say whatever it is you want to say without fear of me using violence against you, as long as it's just talk.
    1
  179.  @thanos8638  I suspect that your notion of "real liberty" is actually tyranny, just with different rulers. There is no inherent contradiction between capitalists and workers.
    1
  180.  @thanos8638  Exactly. Anyone who dissents from the rulers gets suppressed. That's not freedom, that's tyranny as you correctly admit. The rulers have their boots firmly on the faces of the ruled.
    1
  181.  @thanos8638  Which of course in reality means a dictatorship of a select few as "the proletariat" isn't a coherent group.
    1
  182.  @thanos8638  I don't support statists or capitalist dictatorships, you're the bootlicker here. As for why I reply, it's only because I feel like it. It's fun to dunk on authoritarian socialists and expose how incoherent and evil their ideology is now and then.
    1
  183.  @thanos8638  Unfortunately for you, you very literal statist, you have no power over me. No power at all.
    1
  184. Yep. He got all of 2,705 votes.
    1
  185.  @h.hholmes3118  Well I am American and on a simple left-right spectrum I'd be on the right, but I probably wouldn't call myself an "American right winger." I'm a right-libertarian rather than a conservative.
    1
  186.  @h.hholmes3118  At the most fundamental level, I believe in property rights. Capitalism is the system compatible with property rights, so it's the system to go with. Beyond philosophy and into real world application, capitalism has been the greatest force for benefiting mankind the world has ever seen. Compare the world today to the world under feudalism and there's no contest.
    1
  187. It doesn't. We repeatedly observe socialism to collapse or reform to market economies. In the short term government intervention can focus and achieve certain goals, but it ultimately is not sustainable. There's a reason the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. There's a reason North Korea is a dystopian nightmare while South Korea has been thriving.
    1
  188.  @arthurmorgan1550  I did. It's both outdated and basically garbage that is ignoring the ability of capitalism to make countries wealthier in the first place.
    1
  189.  @arthurmorgan1550  It's also hilarious to hear one of the authors of the study say that socialist countries have problems, but they don't have starvation. Meanwhile, back in reality, there's the Holodomor and Great Chinese Famine.
    1
  190.  @arthurmorgan1550  I would call the Holodomor pretty systemic, especially if you lived in the Ukraine. Again, the Soviet Union collapsed. China abandoned the soviet system. North Korea is pathetic. Where socialist central planning goes, misery and failure follow. Calling a source garbage isn't an argument, but citing a source (one from over 30 years ago at that) isn't an argument either.
    1
  191.  karrie36  Wealth is not a zero sum game.
    1
  192.  @backseatgaming9087  Poverty is the natural state of man. The question is not why there are poor people but rather why there are wealthy people. The answer seems pretty clear when looking at history.
    1
  193.  @Atilla_the_Fun  Where does the medicine the doctor prescribes come from? How about the x-ray machines, stethoscopes, specimen jars, the very building itself that the doctor is practicing in? Modern economies are incredibly interconnected. I'd recommend reading "I, Pencil" by Leonard Read to see just how much goes into creating something as seemingly simple as a pencil.
    1
  194. Believe it or not, Marxists are human beings and they often can be reasoned with. Many people who end up supporting socialism don't really understand the fundamental issues with it. "Eradicating" people is the socialist strategy since their ideology can't withstand scrutiny in the free marketplace of ideas. Don't play their illiberal game.
    1
  195. Trump lost and wasn't particularly pro-capitalism anyway.
    1
  196. It's actually pretty satisfying to watch someone who grew up in the USSR or PRC tear into a Stalin / Mao apologist.
    1
  197. Socialists aren't crazy, they're just wrong.
    1
  198.  @thanos8638   Because entrepreneurship, management, and investing capital are all valuable services that did in fact contribute to producing the goods and services.
    1
  199.  @thanos8638  The difference being that workers voluntarily come in and interview for jobs with capitalists.
    1
  200.  @thanos8638  Nope, slavery by definition is involuntary. Capitalists are not roaming the streets throwing chains on workers and workers are free to quit at any time.
    1
  201.  @thanos8638  Except they did, as did socialists.
    1
  202.  @thanos8638  Nope, just like the gulags weren't voluntary either. Fascism and socialism are two sides of the same collectivist, authoritarian, enslaving coin.
    1
  203. Lobbying isn't inherently capitalist. It exists under any system where politicians have the power to create favorable policies.
    1
  204.  @googleaccount-yk1zt  Profit doesn't have to be money. Corruption and influence peddling exist in any government which has power.
    1
  205.  @googleaccount-yk1zt  Lobby (v) seek to influence (a politician or public official) on an issue Lobbying doesn't require capitalism or profit motive.
    1
  206.  @googleaccount-yk1zt  We are all private entities. We all have our own goals and interests, and not everyone runs for office themselves to further these goals and interests through politicians. Even under anarchist concepts of socialism, there would still be lobbying as there would still be interests and people to influence to further those interests. Your idea that it wouldn't exist is simply false.
    1
  207. While it is possible to have a calm discussion about it, it's pretty difficult because of the fundamental divide involved and the threat of violence looming in the background. Capitalism vs socialism isn't a simple difference in policy, it's a radical difference in philosophy, and many socialists acknowledge that the only way their philosophy will be implemented is through bloodshed.
    1
  208. What are you, a monarchist?
    1
  209.  @maxine3978  Well that's a new one. What's the goal, to seize the means of reproduction? As for communists, even they think that liberalism was an improvement that in their minds makes the final revolution by the proletariat possible / inevitable.
    1
  210.  @99oilers55  Loss of individual liberty for one.
    1
  211.  @99oilers55  By collectivization. The right of each individual to own themselves, to own their labor, to own the fruit of their labor, is restricted.
    1
  212.  @Maksie0  Yes, socialism wants to own the fruit of your labor.
    1
  213.  @Maksie0  No. In capitalism you own the fruit of your labor to do with as you will. Socialists on the other hand like to say that others have a claim on the fruit of your labor. That whole "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" thing.
    1
  214.  @Maksie0  No. If you choose to sell your labor to another person in exchange for a wage, then that wage is the fruit of your labor.
    1
  215.  @sh0gun17  Who decides what you are worth? If the "corporate bozos" are doing nothing, why do so many people agree to work for them? No, I don't want socialism.
    1
  216.  @danltg  Except that there is. Worker co-ops exist. People who are self employed exist. There are even communes. The framework of capitalism allows for alternatives.
    1
  217. Humans do take collective action for mutual benefit, but we aren't naturally altruistic. We are competitive. We observe it with tribes warring with other tribes for resources. We observe it even with the biology of our reproductive organs: human males are adapted to "scoop out" semen left by competitors during coitus.
    1
  218. He was a presidential candidate for Socialist Party USA. The better question is how they picked the capitalist side.
    1
  219. From the right: to stigmatize. Calling something socialist immediately discredits it for a lot of people. From the left: to normalize. They want to call it socialism in order to claim that socialism works.
    1
  220.  LOVE  Which of these is actually treating people with human decency: volunteering to donate blood in order to save lives or forcefully taking blood from people under threat of violence in order to save lives?
    1
  221.  LOVE  Your property is your property, whether it is your body or the fruit of your labor. There is nothing greedier than the belief that you are entitled to the property of others.
    1
  222.  LOVE  The employees voluntarily exchanged their labor for compensation by the employer. That compensation becomes the fruit of their labor and you have no right to take it from them.
    1
  223. Setting price ceilings results in shortages and finding ways of charging extra. There are reasons people charge what they do.
    1
  224. By your reasoning, people who aren't socialists shouldn't vote for Biden. Vote for whoever you want in office. It's that simple. An honest vote is never wasted.
    1
  225. @Albert Whisker It is true. There's no prize for voting for the winner and having your candidate lose doesn't mean the vote was wasted. Voting for someone signifies approval of that someone. If you vote for one of the main party candidates, you are signaling that you support them and their policies and it can be taken as a mandate. If you instead vote for someone else, then they actually have to put in effort in future elections to get you to want to vote for them. That's in addition to goals like raising awareness, future ballot access, and getting access to the presidential election campaign funds.
    1
  226. Define owning capital. Does owning shares in a corporation mean that you own capital? If so, over 50% of Americans are capitalists.
    1
  227.  @Maksie0  Nazis certainly were not Marxists, but socialism is not a very well defined term to begin with and fascists are notorious for redefining things to suit their purpose. What is certainly true is that national socialism is an illiberal, collectivist philosophy (though calling it a philosophy might be giving it too much credit)
    1
  228. If it's actually slavery, as in they are being made to work by force or threat of force, then it's not capitalism. If they are free to leave at any time, then the reason they stay is because they believe it is superior to the alternatives. As for the issue of child labor, that's a historical reality. Do you think parents didn't put their children to work in the days of subsistence farming? That's one of the major reasons farmers would have so many children: cheap labor. Child labor continued to happen in the now-modern economies while they were developing. Once an economy sufficiently develops, it becomes less valuable to have children working and more valuable to have them learning instead.
    1
  229.  @whoisheiforgothisname2103  "You are not free to leave under Capitalism" Is anyone using force to make you stay? Threatening you with force to make you stay? If not, then you're free to leave. "you have a choice, work and live, or not work and starve." That isn't the choice. You have a certain biology as a result of being human, meaning that you will starve if you don't obtain food in some fashion. No one is imposing that onto you. Under capitalism, if we are not counting government welfare funded by capitalism, then your basic options if you don't own assets other than yourself are to (a) provide others with something they value so that you can get the food that you value, (b) rely on the charity of others, or (c) find property which is unowned and homestead it to feed yourself "Not to mention most people aren't making their labor value" Sure they are. "when you clock into your work, you are being robbed" Nope. "it is called wage theft and it is the hours you put in and making only a minuscule 10% of that work" Actual wage theft would be where you are entitled to certain wage compensation under your employment contract and then that wage compensation is denied to you. That would be a breach of contract and you could hold the employer liable.
    1
  230.  @arthurmorgan1550  If force and fraud are allowed to operate, then by definition it's not a free market. The material conditions that capitalism has actually caused are the dramatic reduction in child labor and slavery as material conditions have improved. If you're arguing against idealism though, how about the brutal authoritarianism caused by socialism?
    1
  231.  @josec9964  Why is inequality bad in and of itself? What do I care that someone has a mega-yacht or whatever when my situation is also improving? As for "killing the planet", capitalism is your only hope to save the planet without also plunging us into some sort of primitivist nightmare. The human lifespan has doubled in the past century and human knowledge is doubling at an every greater rate. Just look at the statistics.
    1
  232. "Democratic" socialism results in totalitarian control of the economy by bureaucrats.
    1
  233.  @ano3758  How did I strawman?
    1
  234. Subjective preferences. Why do diamonds cost more than water even though diamonds are little more than shiny rocks while water is essential to life?
    1
  235.  @user-kr6sq9df3l  No, it's because of personal situation and desires. If you are in a desert with no water, then a liter of water will likely be more valuable to you than any diamond. If you already have access to many liters of water, then the diamond will likely be more valuable to you than another liter of water.
    1
  236.  @user-kr6sq9df3l  I believe in free markets, yes, and that value is subjective.
    1
  237.  @user-kr6sq9df3l  You said you had a question for capitalists. I answered it.
    1
  238.  @user-kr6sq9df3l  I wouldn't want to compare them directly like that, I'm more just illustrating the principle. The reality is that we don't have free markets, so going into the specifics of why the Kardashians make what they make and neurosurgeons make what they make would have to take into account government intervention.
    1
  239.  @kentallard8852  I'm fairly certain being taxed is having your private property taken. If I came up to you and took money out of your wallet, would that not be theft of your property? I have read both Friedman and Hayek, and they aren't opposed to all regulation. They both supported the regulation necessary for the framework of capitalism; they didn't even have the most extreme positions that one could hold. Capitalism is not lawless chaos.
    1
  240.  @krasmasov6852  Silly strawman is silly. Ask poor people if they would rather earn more money or have better working conditions. See what answer you get.
    1
  241.  @krasmasov6852  Resources are fundamentally scarce, we live in the real world rather than a fantasy. The history of the world was scratching out a poor existence. It was only with the rise of capitalism that it even became possible for the people's situations to improve, and they do. To get upset that the pace of this improvement isn't to your liking and removing the mechanism that allows the improvement in the first place is counterproductive.
    1
  242.  @krasmasov6852  Capitalism observably allows for improvement. In 1820, 84% of global population was living in extreme poverty. By 2015, only 9.6% of global population was living in extreme poverty. Wealth is not a zero sum game. That the rich get richer doesn't mean that the relative poor don't also get richer.
    1
  243.  @krasmasov6852  Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.90 per day, adjusted for purchasing power.
    1
  244. We observe it to be the case. If you were truly selfless, then you would sell everything you own beyond the bare minimum to sustain yourself and dedicate your life to helping others. Very few people do this. I don't see why this needs to be depressing though. There's nothing sad about wanting happiness for yourself and helping others to further your own self-interest.
    1
  245.  @cuttlefish1801  It depends on what exactly you mean by love in order to explain it. Familial love is in your self-interest as fostering such love creates support for you (e.g. parents care for children who in turn care for their parents). Romantic love is in your self-interest for a similar reason and also serves as a strategy to successfully reproduce. Faith is a sort of misfiring of instincts that serve your self-interest: the child that simply accepts that swimming in the river is dangerous when told so by an adult is more likely to survive than the child that is skeptical and ends up getting eaten by crocodiles. Promoting a culture of self-sacrifice is in your self-interest as it means that others are more likely to sacrifice themselves to help you. It makes more sense in a historical context where people lived in small units that were extended families. Also, if you're going to accuse me of being reductionist, then I can do the same. Human beings are motivated primarily by rational self-interest, but we are not wholly rational. We have emotions and instincts that affect our behavior. Why wouldn't you be able to trust anyone who expressed that about themselves? You'd know exactly where they stand. It's a person who acts irrationally that you can't trust.
    1
  246.  @krasmasov6852  Imagine not fighting to avoid being enslaved by the mob.
    1
  247. You're confusing capitalism with interventionism.
    1
  248. Alternative: instead of taxing people and distributing it around to either corporations or to other people, we just stop taxing. The problem isn't deciding who to give stolen money to, the problem is that the government is stealing money. Let people live their lives and plan for themselves instead of trying to put together some central plan that we've seen fail over and over again.
    1
  249.  @NowPleaseReadThis  Things are made by others, but there's no collective planning required. The individual observes that there is demand for clothing and makes clothing to sell. The individual observes that the ones making clothing have needs and desires of their own. Each person planning for themselves results in an emergent order that works better than any sort of central planning you could hope to impose.
    1
  250. @Albert Whisker "If everything is controlled by supply and demand then the one with the most money is king. An unelected, unaccountable tyrant." False. "Also millions of people die of hunger each year" Hunger rates have fallen over time along with extreme poverty rates. Also, you know, just look at the Holodomor and the Great Chinese Famine to see how your central planning goes. "That's what you call good planning? " It demonstrably is. "No that's tyranny and people start to realize that..." That's some Orwellian double-speak. "Freedom is tyranny." Anyone with eyes to see can observe that socialism is the economic system that leads to tyranny.
    1
  251. @Albert Whisker "While in anarchism you'd have direct democracy no privileges and no second layers or whatnot. Those who rule and those who are being ruled are the same group, so in effect there's no one ruling and no one being ruled." Nonsense. Direct democracy results in a tyranny of the majority where the individual is ruled by the whims of others. When two wolves and a sheep get together and vote on what's for dinner, how do you think that goes? "And capitalism and socialism is basically the question whom the means of production belong to." Yes. In capitalism the means of production are owned by whoever owns them according to private property rights. In socialism the means of production are socially owned, with people's right to own property and engage in peaceful transactions being infringed upon. Economic central planning will always result in political tyranny, as it's necessary in order to even attempt to get the plan to work.
    1
  252. ​@Albert Whisker Capitalism has surpassed every system of the past when it comes to improving overall standard of living, raising billions of people out of extreme poverty. If you want to go live in a socialist system, go on and go to one. There are still a few in the world today. Education has become so expensive because of government interference.
    1
  253.  @NowPleaseReadThis  Here's a tax, there's a tax, everywhere there's a tax tax. Tax on making money, tax on spending money, tax on owning property, they even want on tax on saving money. Taxed morning, noon, and night on practically everything you do. Taxation is theft.
    1
  254.  KLJF  No two human beings are exactly equal as we are all unique individuals, but employees and employers have equal rights, yes. You cannot force someone to be employed by you and you also cannot force someone to employ you. Employment is a mutually voluntary relationship.
    1
  255.  KLJF  Neither. Also, name-calling isn't an argument.
    1
  256. @Anonymous If by "get triggered" you mean "explain how you are wrong."
    1
  257. @Anonymous Violence against oppression is one thing. Oppressive violence is another. Socialists don't just use violence against rulers or even against property owners, they use violence against anyone who dares to even speak out against socialism, to express any counterrevolutionary sentiment.
    1
  258. @Anonymous I rest my case then. You're either a child or a monster.
    1
  259.  @dericmederos1514  What's funny is that the Nordic countries actually moved away from more socialist policies. In that there's something for us to copy there, it's the lower amount of business regulation that they have.
    1
  260. @Rayyan Ali Capitalism has dramatically reduced starvation. Try again.
    1
  261.  @aworldtowin80  That's blatantly false. It's true that lots of food gets wasted, but the sheer magnitude of how much food production has increased and what that has done to alleviate world hunger is mind boggling. The poor are way better off today under capitalism than they were even a few centuries ago when feudalism was the norm. Socialism has been implemented, it just never results in what socialists think it should, and communism is totally unworkable on any real scale and will never happen.
    1
  262.  @aworldtowin80  Correction: everyone is poor in a communist society. I understand communism just fine. It's utopian nonsense that will never be the way you want it to be.
    1
  263.  @aworldtowin80  Because even in a society with no money, we can compare standards of living and the value of assets to what they would be with a market economy. I'm using utopian as an insult here, it would really be more of a dystopia. Even if you could make it happen, I wouldn't want to live there.
    1
  264.  @aworldtowin80  Yeah okay, you go live in the Incan Empire where life was truly wonderful as they sacrificed children. I'd rather live in a society that recognizes individual rights where I can live my own life as I will, thank you very much.
    1
  265.  @aworldtowin80  Capitalism, or more accurately liberal democracy, is very much pro-equality of rights. People are inherently not equal, however. You can throw whatever sort of little temper tantrum you want to throw and call me names, but your communism society isn't going to happen. Nothing you say will change that.
    1
  266.  @aworldtowin80  You're clearly not chill, but you're perfectly free to tell yourself that you are if it makes you feel better. I know plenty about communism, and I know that I don't want it. It's not closed minded to disagree with you. As for India, feel free to let me know when it's communist.
    1
  267.  @aworldtowin80   You've already been spewing hatred, so that ship has sailed. I'm not pretending anything, that capitalism has helped more people than any other system in the history of mankind is a fact. Does it magically help everyone? No, of course not. There is obviously pain and suffering in the world, but that doesn't change the fact that capitalism has helped literally billions of people. I disagree with core premises of communism and socialism in general.
    1
  268.  @aworldtowin80  It's a form of socialism (where the means of production are socially owned) where the state, money, and classes no longer exist, with the specifics depending on the exact theory of communism that you're discussing.
    1
  269. Neat. How many weapons have you stockpiled? How much combat training have you had? How many units have you established and what connections have you made within the military and police?
    1
  270. The military industrial complex is a result of big government: it couldn't exist without the subsidies from taxation / money printing. War is unprofitable compared to trade.
    1
  271. I rarely see people really think out what a life of selflessness would actually be. There would be no self, your entire existence would be dedicated to others. The only things you would purchase for your own use would be what you need to survive (since you can't serve others if you're dead) with everything else going to others. You become little more than a cell in a collective body. On the other hand, selfishness does not preclude helping others while at the same time cultivating and growing the self. It is in your own selfish interest that the people around you not be desperate and starving. Even beyond that, helping others because it feels good to do so is also selfish, as is helping others as a form of signaling. The people being helped probably aren't going to care why you are helping them.
    1
  272. They aren't though. Just because they picked random people rather than actual economists or political philosophers doesn't mean that capitalism isn't factual. There is a reason why Marxian economics is heterodox. There is a reason why classical economics gave way to neoclassical economics. Once you toss out the labor theory of value for the subjective theory of value, the moral basis for objecting to capitalism falls apart. On the other hand, we have lots of theory backed up with evidence to show why central planning is a problem.
    1
  273. ​ @Ry_TSG  No, it shows that the socialists are either disingenuous or don't know what socialism is. Considering that Mimi there in interviews advocates for the end of capitalism in favor of socialism, that suggests the former. The Netherlands isn't socialist, it's capitalist with a social safety net. Social democracy and democratic socialism are not the same thing, I didn't engage in any whataboutism, and discussing the US economy is more complex than you make it out to be. The US is not some laissez-faire utopia, it's riddled with burdensome regulations and other issues that you don't find in the Scandinavian countries.
    1
  274.  @thanos8638  There is no exploitation in mutually voluntary capitalist exchange.
    1
  275.  @thanos8638  That's nonsensical. Things like time preference and risk are not.
    1
  276. A socialist YouTuber made a video talking about what happened in this one, so his viewers flooded in.
    1
  277. Because if there's something socialist countries are known for, it's freedom. They totally aren't oppressive authoritarian regimes.
    1
  278.  @firmanchristiansianturi4794  There is no perfect country, but you are delusional if you think people had more civil liberties in say, the Soviet Union, than they do in the US.
    1
  279.  @Maksie0  Socialists are just trying to impose their own authoritarianism like what they have in Cuba. Liberals are the ones fighting authoritarianism, as always.
    1
  280. That does sound like something a socialist would say.
    1
  281.  @Natearl13  Right, because it's bootlicking to not want socialist hands in my pockets.
    1
  282.  @Natearl13  Yes I know. I want to dramatically cut the military budget, but I don't want to replace it with healthcare spending. Let's actually do something about the national debt.
    1
  283.  @Natearl13  Or we could just keep cutting and bring the government back to what it's supposed to be. The way to fix healthcare is to get government out of it. All the way out of it.
    1
  284.  @Natearl13  False. A for profit system is about 'greed', yes, but this is a good thing rather than a bad thing. Greed leads to innovation and expanding supply to meet demand. Most of the problems people have with the US healthcare system are being caused by government involvement and the cronyism that results from such things.
    1
  285.  @Natearl13  Innovation comes from greed all the time. Corporations don't need to care about anything else: their own selfish interests benefit their customers. Also, I do see people in other countries complaining about their systems.
    1
  286.  @Natearl13   Many more than a rich few can afford it, and many more still would be able to afford it if prices were not artificially high from government involvement. I don't care one bit what people in other countries have to say. We should do what is correct, not what other countries do. If we did what others did then we'd still be living under monarchy.
    1
  287.  @Natearl13  It has a whole lot to do with government involvement. Government involvement artificially restricts the number of doctors and hospitals, gives corporations temporary monopolies on medicine, adds costs through regulations, and increases prices through paying bills. The rest of the world doesn't agree on a single system (there are many variations on universal healthcare) and again, the rest of the world doing something doesn't make it correct.
    1
  288.  @Natearl13  They inflate the price because the government system enables them to do so. Taxation is theft and most of the services you listed should be privatized. How much have you donated to save the lives of others?
    1
  289.  @Natearl13  ?
    1
  290.  @Natearl13  You have me confused with the "I think I got him" comment.
    1
  291.  @h.hholmes3118  Sure. It's based on a fundamentally mistaken understanding of economics and suppresses the rights of the individual.
    1
  292.  @h.hholmes3118  The most fundamental of all, which forms the basis of Marxist theory, is his understanding of value as being determined by the amount of labor needed to produce a good or service. It is understandable why he thought that based on the economic understanding of his time, but it is wrong nonetheless.
    1
  293.  @h.hholmes3118  Like I said, it's understandable why Marx thought the way he did, but classical economics is mistaken just like Marxist economics is mistaken. Our understanding of economics has moved on since then just like our understanding of the world in general has moved on.
    1
  294.  @sauveylindsey3378  Capitalism is regulated. Regulation in general benefits large businesses at the expense of small business and specific regulation is often pushed by certain businesses to hurt their competitors. Why do you suppose Amazon has started lobbying in support of a $15 minimum wage? Do you think it's out of the goodness of their hearts, that Amazon of all companies has a great love of workers? If so I have a bridge to sell you.
    1
  295. It is important to understand the theoretical background, but real world observations are also important.
    1
  296.  @krasmasov6852  Anarcho-communists are never going to bring it about either. But hey, if you and a bunch of other communists want to go and set up a voluntary commune or whatever, be my guest. As long as everyone involved is consenting, I don't particularly care. It's only when you start trying to drag other people into it and seizing property that doesn't belong to you that there's a problem.
    1
  297.  @krasmasov6852  There are a bunch of communes inside the United States and other capitalist countries. You can certainly do it if you want to. I oppose interventionist coups, but I don't have any obligation to help you either. I don't see how you think this is going to play out though if your starting assumption is that you will be overthrown by a capitalist government. Are you going to wait for that mythical global revolution that's never coming? Yes though, taking stuff from the rich, or anyone else for that matter, is called "stealing." Stealing is wrong, didn't anyone ever teach you that?
    1
  298. Because socialism is a fundamentally illiberal ideology. It's about the collective good, the class identity. Individuals are subordinate to the collective, with it simply being selfishness to think otherwise.
    1
  299.  @daniyalrose686  Not really.
    1
  300.  @kermitthefrog7425   Many of the people who have the idea are coming from good intentions, but socialism itself is inherently monstrous. It won't just usually end up with totalitarianism, it always will when left unchecked. It's an inevitable outcome.
    1
  301. There's nothing greedier than thinking you are entitled to the property of others.
    1
  302.  @thanos8638  Nonsense. Corporatism arose in opposition to capitalism.
    1
  303.  @thanos8638  Marxian economic analysis is foundationally mistaken. Corporatism very much exists as its own, collectivist family of philosophies standing in contrast to capitalism.
    1
  304.  @thanos8638  "corporatism is collectivist?" Yes. "What do you take?" Facts. "Corporatism is a collectivist political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "human body". The hypothesis that society will reach a peak of harmonious functioning when each of its divisions efficiently performs its designated function, such as a body's organs individually contributing its general health and functionality, lies at the center of corporatist theory." Yeah I know, "Wikipedia lol", but still helpful. "Can you tell me how Marxian economic analysis is flawed?" There are numerous ways that it's flawed, but the most basic is that it's built upon the labor theory of value, which is false.
    1
  305.  @thanos8638  "The fact that you think corporations earning more money than the rest is collectivist is shocking." Way to not actually address what I said. "Marx literally never argued in favour of LTV" That's absurdly false. "It was Ricardo who argued in favour of LTV." Yes, the classical economists held to LTV, then Marx critiqued their conclusions and used LTV to develop his criticism of capitalism. "Marxist theory of value is called as 'Value theory'" You can call things whatever you like. Marx was definitely using LTV in his tortured line of reasoning. You're just being intellectually dishonest at this point, though I guess I shouldn't expect otherwise from a communist.
    1
  306.  @thanos8638  Anyone who reads a book by Marx will understand just how silly you are being. LTV is literally how he developed the concept of exploitation of surplus value. That he didn't literally call it LTV is irrelevant.
    1
  307.  @thanos8638  Alright, how about Capital? You can find it all over the place, starting from the very beginning in Chapter 1 Section 1 where he discusses commodities: "all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.", "A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article" It goes on and on. What's really funny is that most socialists understand and accept this, making you a strange oddity. Rather than deny that Marxian economics uses LTV, they defend LTV.
    1
  308.  @Hellcat-to3yh  We don't live in a socialist society, so what you're saying is that none of these people are socialists.
    1
  309.  @Hellcat-to3yh  Then in the same sense there are people who support capitalism (referred to as a capitalist) and someone who is actually a capitalist (in that they carry out capitalist actions)
    1
  310.  @sauveylindsey3378  No, we can't all agree on those three things.
    1
  311.  @krasmasov6852  The doubling of the human lifespan, the lifting of billions of people out of extreme poverty, the vast amount of wealth and plenty created. If you don't recognize that human beings are better off today than in the 1600s, I don't know what to tell you. Capitalism is the only hope that you have for saving the world without going back to monkeys and killing millions or billions.
    1
  312. @Albert Whisker Commies to the left of me, Nazis to the right of me. At least this time any liberal who knows history will realize that both sides are the enemy.
    1
  313. @Albert Whisker A socialist talking about freedom is a bad joke.
    1
  314. @Albert Whisker Workers are perfectly free to own the means of production under capitalism. Meanwhile people are forced to obey under socialism. It's perfectly clear which system has more freedom for the individual.
    1
  315. @Albert Whisker Repeating something over and over again doesn't make it true. Capitalism is not a scam and wealth is not a zero sum game. Everyone can win under capitalism. Sure, some people win more, but even the relatively poor are way better off now than they were a few centuries ago: a rising tide lifts all boats.
    1
  316. Socialists are the ones who literally call for a revolution to seize the means of production.
    1
  317. Labor can often be replaced with capital goods. Having no unemployment would be a pretty nightmarish thing, that would mean everyone is working constantly from birth to death. You have to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary unemployment. Voluntary unemployment occurs when the individual could get work but decides not to, whether that's because they value their leisure more highly than any work or they value their labor higher than what anyone is willing to pay for it. Involuntary unemployment occurs when there literally isn't any work available. Involuntary unemployment results from government intervention. Poverty is the natural state of mankind, not a moral failing. In the past everyone lived in poverty. The question becomes why there are so many people now who don't live in poverty. The answer is capitalism, which creates wealth and benefits all parties involved, including the poor. In that there are still people who need help, it's up to each of us to offer it. Give to charity, help your neighbors, do volunteer work. It's easy to say that people should be helped, it's harder to actually take personal responsibility and help.
    1
  318. His real name was Emidio.
    1
  319.  @codywieczorek  Yet it repeatedly results in the exact opposite.
    1
  320. @Cesar Salazar Determine people's abilities and needs, directing the economy to allocate resources accordingly. Socialism results in a vast government bureaucracy with totalitarian power that suppresses anyone and anything that doesn't go along with it.
    1
  321.  @codywieczorek  There has, multiple times. Socialism is the social ownership of the means of production. The USSR was socialist. PRC was socialist before their economic reforms. North Korea is still socialist.
    1
  322.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  No, it isn't. People have negative rights, not positive ones. You have a right to not be murdered, to not be enslaved, to not be stolen from. You don't have a right to the bodies and labor of others.
    1
  323.  @soulplexis  Because living requires labor and scarce resources. You are not entitled to the labor and property of others.
    1
  324.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Where do you suppose the government is getting the money from?
    1
  325.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Taxation is theft, yes. It's the taking of property through the threat or actual use of force without consent.
    1
  326.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  ​ No, you didn't. Living in a town with a mafia does not imply that you consent to having the mafia hit you up for protection money. I compensate people for mutually voluntary transactions. I didn't ask for any of the nonsense the government does supposedly for my benefit, so I fail to see why I'm obligated to give up my property to have a portion of it returned to me while another portion is used for monstrous acts.
    1
  327.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  The government essentially is the mafia and the mafia proclaims that it does provide something. I didn't ask for the government to do any of those things you describe and I reject the notion that taxes are necessary for them. If you're worried about me benefiting while not contributing, how about we create a voluntary system instead? Instead of forcing everyone to pay taxes for roads, for instance, the people who want roads can pay a fee to use roads. People can voluntarily fund the services that they actually want without getting thrown into a cage or murdered if they don't.
    1
  328.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  People pay for voluntary things all the time. You don't think businesses that rely on roads to move goods would have an interest in paying for them? That's like saying you're totally free to not roll over and willingly spread your legs for an assailant, but there are consequences for not doing so. If you provide me something without getting me to agree to provide something in return, that's called a gift. I didn't ask for any of these things and I actively don't want many of them, like spying on me or bombing other countries. You aren't stealing if I show up to your door one day, force a new TV into your home that you didn't ask for, and then you refuse when I demand that you give me ten thousand dollars.
    1
  329.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Yes, I do, and I would pay to make that happen. You don't need forced taxation for that.
    1
  330.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  No to both those things.
    1
  331.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  You make it sound as if there's no way airlines could have an incentive to make sure their pilots were qualified without some government agency. As for schools, private schools and homeschooling are both things.
    1
  332.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  My point is that you don't need the FAA for that. Airlines already have a profit motive to not have their planes crash. To boost that motive, you could have insurance companies which would require their own standards before they would cover an airline. No, education is not a right and merely declaring that it is does not make it so. In the sense that the government can even have obligations (which is already dubious), it would merely be to protect people's actual rights: life, liberty, and property. The world I want to live in is a world of liberty, a world that enables people to live their own lives pursuing their own goals and desires, a world where everyone owns themselves.
    1
  333.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  No. The right to life, like all natural rights, is a negative right. It means that I cannot murder you, it does not mean that I must keep you alive. Such a positive right would result in a gross infringement on the rights to liberty and property as it would create a duty to provide any and all of your labor and property to others. This quickly becomes self-contradictory as resources and labor are scarce. No. Impoverished starvation is the natural state of mankind. It is by people having the liberty to live their own lives and take their own actions that they rise above the natural state.
    1
  334.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  That's nonsensical. If you have a positive right to be alive then that creates a duty for everyone else to keep you that way. If everyone has such a positive right then we cannot spare any labor or expense whatsoever when it comes to feeding the hungry around the world, curing diseases, or keeping the elderly alive at all costs. Your entire life and the lives of everyone else would have to be dedicated to keeping everyone alive. Nope. Put simply, your right to live means that I cannot murder you. That's all. I don't owe you anything to sustain yourself and you don't owe me anything to sustain myself.
    1
  335.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  That's a world of slavery. If you really believed that people had a positive right to life, then you would sell all of your possessions beyond the bare minimum to sustain yourself, donate the proceeds to others in need, and then go to some impoverished area and selflessly dedicate yourself to keeping them alive. You're a hypocrite if you don't do that.
    1
  336.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  That's not possible. Food, medicine, education, housing, etc. don't magic themselves into existence. They require the use of labor and scarce resources.
    1
  337.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  That food and those houses belong to people, produced by people's labor and people's resources. To say that they must be given to others is to say that people must give up things. I freely admit that I am selfish, but not nearly so selfish as those who believe they are entitled to the labor and property of others. Again, if you are so selfless, then sell everything you own and dedicate your life to others. That's what being selfless means. Until you're willing to do that, you're just being a hypocrite.
    1
  338.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Saying things like you're "advocating for change" or "promoting awareness" is just an excuse for not really doing anything. You could advocate for change while also selling everything you own and devoting yourself to others. Either put up or admit that you're a hypocrite who wants to talk the talk but not walk the walk. It belongs to the farmer to do with as they will. If they wish to donate food to people, then that is their right, but they have no duty to do so. Same with the bank and the house. It belongs to them. If you want to try to convince them to let people move in, go for it, but they have no obligation to. That's actually not true. Some people get more out of "society" than they put in and some people get less out of "society" than they put in.
    1
  339.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Yes, by stripping people of their individual liberty and reducing them to slaves of the collective.
    1
  340.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Nope. In capitalism everyone owns themselves, their labor, and the fruit of their labor to do with as they will.
    1
  341.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  You are being paid what your labor is worth. The value of your labor is determined by mutual consent between you (the seller of your labor) and your employer (the buyer of your labor). If you didn't value the compensation that you were receiving greater than your labor, you wouldn't agree to perform the labor. The "working class" is not some coherent group or super-individual. I seek equal rights and liberty for all individuals, and socialism tramples upon that.
    1
  342.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  It was mutual, and "take it or leave it" isn't authoritarian. If you go to the grocery store and want to buy a bag of apples, is it authoritarian if the grocery store doesn't allow you to haggle and insists on their set price? Besides, employees bargain for better pay and other compensation all the time, both individually and collectively through unions. The only way it wasn't mutual would be if the employer held a gun to your head or locked you up or something along those lines. Labor does not have any objective value as the value of all things is subjective. What a thing is worth is what the buyer and seller agree that it is worth. If you really believe that the employer is bringing nothing of value to the table, then you are at liberty under capitalism to work for yourself or to form a worker co-op. No one is stopping you.
    1
  343.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Sounds like workers in America don't value unions very highly then. Of course you had a choice. You could have refused their offer. You don't have to buy the apples. If you a good business idea you could attract investors, but at the end of the day no one owes you the resources to start a business. Like usual, the liberty to start a business is negative. No one can stop you from doing it, but no one has to help you. Because that's authoritarian and violates the property rights of individuals. Also, remember, taxation is theft, and no one's labor is being exploited. Because coercion and theft are unjust, that's why. If workers wish to form worker co-ops, they are perfectly at liberty to do so, but they are not entitled to have such things.
    1
  344.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  Corporations as we know them are the result of legislation in the first place. The solution to them isn't more legislation but rather to undo the legislation that grants them special protections. We didn't establish that at all, that's merely something you claimed which I disputed before you seemingly gave up on it to start talking about the flawed Marxist concept of exploitation of surplus value (even if you didn't expressly put it in those terms).
    1
  345.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  That's false though. The value of labor, like the value of everything else, is whatever consenting buyers and sellers determine it to be. Workers aren't "owed" any specific amount of compensation.
    1
  346.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  I'm also talking about the relationship between a "business" and a "customer." You are the owner of your labor, selling your services to a customer. When you provide that service, you receive the agreed upon compensation. Imagine if a business ran at a loss. Would the workers then owe money to the business?
    1
  347.  @harpoonmcfierce9697  No, you aren't, because you can refuse whatever the manager says. If you feel that the offered compensation is worth less than your labor, then you can say "no thanks" and walk away. As for a manager making more money, again, value is subjective. The exact same thing can be worth different amounts to different people, and we aren't even talking about the exact same thing as labor is never going to be exactly the same between different individuals. Why do the workers not owe the business? If the business owes the workers for any amount above the cost of doing business because of their labor, then why would the workers not owe the business for any shortfall? After all, by your reasoning it would have been their labor that caused it. I've already told you exactly why I believe as I do. I believe in the natural rights of individuals, that each individual owns themselves and that others are not entitled to their person, labor, or property. If you can't accept that, then that's your problem.
    1
  348. In reality it didn't. Presidential candidate Mimi there got a total of 2,705 votes.
    1
  349.  @kali8526  Ah yes, just the sort of wit I'd expect from a leftist. Everyone who opposes socialism must just be a Trump supporter, right?
    1
  350. That isn't new. They've been calling for revolution since Marx, though when it doesn't happen "naturally" they aren't above helping it along like in Russia.
    1
  351.  @jokerpilled2535  Outlawing sex work just drives the creation of black markets for something which is not actually unjust. The notion that you can give something away for free but can't sell it is nonsense.
    1
  352.  @jokerpilled2535  But it wouldn't be a crime if they did, now would it?
    1
  353.  @jokerpilled2535  No, but there's a difference between what I want and what should be legal. It is not my place to forcibly prohibit another person from doing with their own body as they will. Discouraging behavior that you think is distasteful or self destructive is the role of culture, not law.
    1
  354.  @jokerpilled2535  No, because those actually are unjust as they lack consent.
    1
  355.  @jokerpilled2535  I've already had that discussion on this very thread. The employer-worker relationship is a mutually voluntary one, not a coercive one. There should be no such thing as a minimum wage.
    1
  356.  @jokerpilled2535  Monopolies result from government interventionism. In a free market employers compete with one another.
    1
  357.  @jokerpilled2535  Laws that intervene in the market exist to benefit some at the expense of others, whether it's massive corporations giving themselves an advantage over competitors or one group of workers giving themselves an advantage over other workers.
    1
  358.  @jokerpilled2535  In a free market the monopolies don't form in the first place except in a few special cases that would hardly give them the power to form their own governments. Government regulation is a reaction against the negative effects of previous government regulation. As for the Bill of Rights, I certainly do like it, but it certainly doesn't defend you against government tyranny. After all, who rules on decisions regarding the bill of rights and whether it's been violated? The government does. It's the judge in its own case.
    1
  359.  @jokerpilled2535  There's never been a completely free market, but through history we have seen that markets which are more free lead to economic growth and increasing standards of living. You shouldn't confuse a free market with lawless chaos. They aren't equivalent. If there is not a system in place to deal with force and fraud, then it's not a free market. No, I don't. The government coercion involved in overseeing those problems will simply cause more problems and hurt you in the long run. The way you solve poverty is with jobs. The way you get more jobs is with the free market. Covering the gaps is the role of things like private charity and mutual aid groups.
    1
  360.  @arthurmorgan1550  "If it is profitable to use slavery, child labor, or invade another country for its natural resources, then those things will occur under capitalism." Yet these things have been reduced under capitalism. How strange. It's almost like saving and capital accumulation and free exchange make these things less profitable. It no longer makes sense to treat men like beasts when you have machines or actual beasts to do that sort of work. It no longer makes sense to put children to work when the immediate needs of survival have been met and having children learning instead provides more benefit in the long run. It no longer makes sense to invade another country for its natural resources, an expensive process that destroys resources, when those resources can be had through peaceful exchange. "We need an economic system that puts people before profits, and that’s socialism." This makes no sense. Where do you suppose profits come from in capitalism? They come from serving people, from supplying customers with what they want. The customers, the people, are the ultimate decision makers in capitalism. The capitalist who does not serve the customer will fail. Saying that we need socialism is like saying we need to drink bleach. It's poison. "yet you’re ignoring its a result of corporations lobbying the government." I'm not ignoring it at all. Big business and big government have long been in bed with each other. However, the solution is not destroying capitalism and replacing it with socialism, but rather by removing the incentive to lobby by withering away the government. "A completely free market doesn’t exist because it’s idealist nonsense." Says the socialist. "The state is a mechanism of class antagonism, so as long as there are classes there will be a state" In a sense you're correct, though not in the way you intend. You have the rulers in government and you have the ruled. This doesn't change under socialist governments, you still have rulers and ruled. Without government to serve as the source of coercion to grant favors and pit special interests against each other, the interests of business owners and the interests of workers are aligned.
    1
  361.  @bobwilson3780   'Luck' plays a role in every system, people are fundamentally not the same. Capitalism has democracy if individuals choose to have it. That's the thing, capitalism is all about individual choice. You aren't forced into democracy under capitalism. That's a good thing.
    1
  362.  @bobwilson3780  "what I should have said is luck plays a bigger role in capitalism than merit." k "Also, this whole economic system has thrown a whole generation if not two generations in the dirt." Nope, and capitalism is what has raised people up to be capable of being 'thrown into the dirt' in the first place. "I'm glad capatilsm is dying" Socialism is what has repeated failed and collapsed. "we've just made more kings." Every man can be a king. Every woman can be a queen. Every nonbinary can be a monarch. "You capitalists give the people as little as you can such that they don't revolt" You socialists think you are entitled to the fruit of the labor of others. "I presume you are over sixty" Nope. "have done well out of this system" Yep. Billions of people have. "For every ' successful person' there are many 'failures" Even the 'failures' are better off under capitalism. "Capitalism leaves the power in the hands of the few" Power is in the hands of the many. You choose if you will buy or not buy, sell or not sell. "That is one of the defining features of capitalism, inequality, or if you like, no democracy" Democracy takes power away from the individual, subjecting them to the will of others. Tyranny of the majority is a phrase for a reason. "in Central Africa, you would be screwed no matter your diligence or talents." Central Africa is also notorious for forms of socialism and government control that are very anti-capitalist. Even so, global capitalism has benefited Africa. "Luck played in your favour at birth, you are just entitled and callous if you believe this capitalist system is working." A socialist calling someone else entitled is quite something. You exist in a world made possible by capitalism, a world where billions have been lifted out of extreme poverty, where multiple diseases have been eradicated, where the technology to make this conversation happen exists.
    1
  363.  @bobwilson3780  Yep. Capitalism incentivizes scientific progress and makes the resulting technology cheaper and more available. Look at human scientific progress before capitalism and after capitalism. Look at the spread of technology before capitalism and after capitalism.
    1
  364.  @bobwilson3780   Except I literally explained why it is that way. It's profit motive. Companies pump hundreds of billions of dollars into scientific research. Let me know when you find a system that's better. Socialism sure isn't it.
    1
  365. Meanwhile, back in reality, presidential candidate Mimi there only managed to get 2,705 votes.
    1
  366.  @humble_roots  Yeah, because they're basically kids (are they even old enough to run?). I'll let you take a guess as to whether the actual winner of the election was a socialist or a capitalist.
    1
  367.  @humble_roots  Not what I said, but your little "socialists win again" in the context of a presidential candidate versus some kids that had no real life consequence is pathetic.
    1
  368.  @humble_roots  Yeah, because that's totally the only reason Bernie lost twice.
    1
  369.  @humble_roots  Well I will agree with you that the Democratic and Republican parties are indeed pathetic and will happily rig the system in order to maintain power, but I can still call you pathetic as well.
    1
  370.  @Maksie0  That's incredibly amusing considering the history of socialism.
    1
  371. A capitalist is simply someone who supports capitalism, like a socialist is someone who supports socialism.
    1
  372. @Albert Whisker I know that's the way socialists want to try to frame the discussion, but no.
    1
  373. @Albert Whisker "that's not how that works" Actually it is. Language changes over time and this usage is more useful and consistent. You can try to deny that people who support capitalism are capitalists if you want, but we're just going to keep using the label.
    1
  374. @Albert Whisker Actually, attempting to restrict people who support capitalism from identifying as capitalists would be more in line with newspeak.
    1
  375. @Albert Whisker "Nope calling everything one doesn't like socialism or communism was very effective newspeak." Which I haven't done. "Eroding the meaning of political terms to the point where nobody even knows what they say when they use terms is newspeak" Which I'm not doing. "Using terms as they were intended is anything but newspeak." I am using terms the way I intend to use them. "Also if you want to talk about war does it make sense to talk to foot soldiers or generals?" You would want to talk to both. Only talking to generals would give you an incomplete picture of war. "Also that would mean that "capitalism" is an ideology" It is, yes. I don't see what's so dreadful about that.
    1
  376. @Albert Whisker In this case, the reason why the "soldiers" fight would be pretty relevant to you I think. If you advocate for socialism and become too focused on the "1%," you're going to miss that a large chunk of the "99%" wants nothing to do with your policies.
    1
  377. @Albert Whisker "Capitalism is literally about the opinions of the 1%" No, it isn't. "Why do you think you need to be filthy rich to be elected president?" Don't confuse economic systems with political systems. "Or why do you think companies don't pay their fair share." Because individuals already get taxed. "Unless you got political power your opinions are nothing more than your opinions and they don't matter." False, your opinions very much matter to you, and you seem to have missed my point. Unless you're some sort of nihilistic socialist who is resigned to capitalism, you're seeking to change the system through elections or revolution. Either way, the opinions of the "99%" should matter, otherwise you're just going to keep losing elections or find out the truth the hard way when your revolution fails.
    1
  378. @Albert Whisker "Capitalism is a system defined by private ownership of the means of production." Correct. "It's literally, like in that's what the word implies, literally the rule of capital or those who own capital." Incorrect. Ownership of property does not equal rule over others. "Don't make the mistake of assuming that economic systems are NOT political." Political systems that include capitalism as the economic system run the gamut from anarchy (though left anarchists will complain about using that term) all the way to absolute dictatorships. Simply saying that a country is capitalist tells you nothing about its politics. "And capital gain is taxed less than gains from work" Specifically, long term capital gains, supposedly to encourage investing. Hey though, if you want to simplify the tax code down then that's fine by me. "Warren Buffet has a lower tax rate than his secretary" The top 1% pays more in federal income tax than the bottom 90% combined. "Also given that companies are technically legal entities those "individuals" also need to pay their fair share." Corporate taxes are a thing already. This amounts to double taxation, but yeah, it exists. "you aka "the mob" from making meaningful decisions for yourself" I am not "the mob." I am individual, I am very much glad that I don't live under mob rule. The founding fathers limited democracy for a very good reason. I make meaningful decisions for myself all the time. I decide where I live. I decide where I work. I decide what I buy, who I spend time with, what my hobbies are, etc. The majority of the things people do in life are decided by them. "But the point is whether they agree with that or don't agree with that doesn't make a difference unless they actually do something about it. From public protest, to elections, to revolutions, demanding accountability or pretty much anything." Correct, and the people who agree with capitalism are going to vote against you and would resist a revolution. Like I said, keep ignoring them and you'll just keep losing.
    1
  379. Human beings are inherently unequal by their very nature. To say you are going to "destroy inequality" is saying that you are going to engage in a monstrous eugenics program and totalitarian control over all life. Then again, the one engaging in those things would be unequal with the ones subjected to it, so the entire notion is incoherent.
    1
  380. Conservatism is culturally relative. In a socialist society, conservatives would uphold socialism. There are a number of political philosophies that support or otherwise allow for capitalism, the primary one that has force in the world being the various forms of liberalism. Using the term capitalist to describe any supporter of capitalism is just more convenient.
    1
  381.  @Maksie0  It's not though, so long as the dude justly owns the factory and the workers all consented to their salaries.
    1
  382.  @bruhbruh4902  You won't get arrested or otherwise assaulted. Whether you'll be fine or not is up to what you do besides working.
    1
  383.  @trevalyn9953  It is really bizarre after the 20th century. Then again, there are still fascists running around, so 🤷
    1
  384. Correct. What a bizarre world we live in where not wanting to be stolen from is called selfishness and wanting to steal from others is called caring.
    1
  385.  karrie36  Right, and that was wrong, just like it was wrong when native people stole land from one another. War, genocide, and theft are hardly recent things.
    1
  386.  karrie36  And it continues to be wrong when it happens now. However, what is also true is that war has dramatically decreased since the rise of liberal democracy, capitalism, and free trade.
    1
  387.  karrie36   It's true. Liberal democracies rarely go to war with each other and international trade has greatly changed incentives. It makes much more sense to simply trade for the resources that you want than to go to war for them.
    1
  388.  karrie36  Not an argument.
    1
  389. In the sense that ideologies can be evil, socialism is evil just like fascism is evil. We know from both history and theory what happens when socialism is attempted. People are equal in the sense that we are all human beings with human rights, but people are fundamentally not equal in a myriad of other ways. We come in all different shapes and sizes and ability and circumstance. Trying to impose equality causes suffering.
    1
  390.  @Rithemofthenight  Different socialists say they want to do all sorts of different things depending on their particular brand of socialism. In the end it boils down to much the same thing: slavery and theft. That's what it means to "make people economically equal" as people naturally are not going to be economically equal if you leave them be.
    1
  391. There is no one "socialist person", but usually they are motivated by a fundamental misunderstanding of reality, jealousy, arrogance, mental illness, or some combination.
    1
  392.  @thanos8638  There surely are individual capitalists who can have those traits, but those who advocate for capitalism by and large don't. It's the arrogance of socialists to think they can plan an economy, it's the jealousy of socialists that they are more deserving of wealth and status than the rich, it's the misunderstanding of socialists to still cling to a theory of value over a century out of date, and it's shocking how often socialists try to say how you should run your life when they are suffering from crippling mental illness themselves.
    1
  393.  @krasmasov6852  "Easy." Oh? Say that I own a computer which I use to watch YouTube videos. I obtained this computer by the fruit of my labor. Would this be "personal" property? Suppose I then use that very computer to start engaging in business. Has it become private property? Suppose I hire you on to work at that business using that computer. What happens?
    1
  394.  @krasmasov6852  Oh, it wouldn't? There is no entrepreneurship under communism? No one starts new businesses and brings new people onboard? Now that the computer has become private property, does everyone else now have a right to it?
    1
  395.  @krasmasov6852  So much for innovation, so much for satisfying the wants of people in more efficient ways or accounting for changing wants. So what has happened is that you stole my computer. It was my "personal" property, the fruit of my labor, and you took it. You're a thief.
    1
  396.  @Atilla_the_Fun  "If you hire other people to use your computer to work on it, whatever THEY produce is theirs" Why? It's my computer, not theirs. I saved for it and they agreed to sell their labor to me at a certain rate. "and pay the workers less than what they produce in value" Let me give you a little example to help you understand time preference. Imagine that I offer to sell you a box with a million dollars inside, but you can't open it until a year from now. For the sake of the example, assume the box itself is worthless. How much are you willing to pay me for the box? Clearly you wouldn't pay me a million dollars for it. It's the same with the worker's labor. The worker gets paid regardless of when or even if the goods that they are producing is sold. "Does that seem off to you?" No. They're my PS4s. I utilized my savings to acquire these capital goods and have a lower time preference compared to the pro-gamers.
    1
  397. Like Socrates noted long ago, people are easily tempted by the sweet shop owner when what they really need is the doctor with bitter medicine. People throw their liberty away and end up working against their own self interests because they want government to solve their problems for them.
    1
  398.  @Maksie0  Multiple ways. First, it's funded through taxation, which is theft. Second, it results in the creation of a massive bureaucracy that gets to decide what sort of treatment you can and cannot have and fundamentally controls how that treatment is going to be done. Third, it incentivizes the state to try to control your life in other ways in order to minimize healthcare costs (e.g. taxing foods and activities the state deems unhealthy to discourage those things).
    1
  399.  @Maksie0  Complaining about driver's licenses misses the more fundamental issue that government shouldn't be in charge of roads in the first place. A system of private roads would almost certainly involve some sort of certification for use, and it would likely be superior to the government system because there would be actual financial incentive to prevent accidents.
    1
  400.  @Maksie0  You joke, but yes, the roads would almost certainly be far superior to the crumbling mess that they are right now. Companies provide goods and services that customers want, and if they fail to do that then they lose money or even go out of business. Government has no such accountability. It does what it does regardless of whether the product it is putting out is good or not.
    1
  401.  @Maksie0  Competent politicians are almost an oxymoron. The incentive structure is all backwards, and government is always going to be inefficient about it. One of the big illusions is that electing different politicians fundamentally changes anything. The bureaucrats remain. Talking about ISPs would get into another discussion about things like rural markets and regulations and whatnot, and as for how roads compete, you have to keep in mind that roads are not the only method of transportation and you also don't have to have a road right next to another road in order to compete.
    1
  402.  @Maksie0  Government forcing people to shut down their businesses and drive people out of work isn't capitalism.
    1
  403.  @Maksie0  On the basis of property rights and voluntary exchange. Amazon employees agreed to perform certain work for certain compensation and Amazon customers agreed to purchase certain goods at certain prices. The company belongs to Bezos and other shareholders.
    1
  404.  @Maksie0  I'm not talking about legality according to the state, I'm talking about natural rights. Do you own yourself? Do you own your labor? Do you own the fruit of your labor? Capitalism is the system that results if you answer yes to these questions. Natural rights show us that slavery was unjust as it violated the inalienable property right that every human being has over themselves.
    1
  405.  @Maksie0  Property ownership is a natural state of being. Money is a human invention that enabled people to convert their perishable property to more durable property and thus accumulate more than they otherwise would be able to.
    1
  406.  @Maksie0  Modern capitalism is a recent development, but the fundamental natural rights upon which it is based have always existed even though many people failed to recognize them. The earth was always round even when some people thought it was flat. Slavery was always unjust even when some people thought it was acceptable. Ancient humanity scrabbled for bare bones survival and the kings of feudalism had less than the common man of today; it is the recognition of property rights and the development of capitalism that has brought billions of people out of poverty.
    1
  407.  @Maksie0  The recognition of private property relates to the quality of life improving since it enables people to make improvements without worrying about having it simply snatched away, to be secure in the knowledge that what is theirs is in fact theirs. We see this today in environments where property rights are not well enforced, they languish in poverty. Poverty is not "exported." Other countries were already in poverty and it is fact capitalism that is rapidly bringing countries like China out of poverty. Why do people agree to work in sweatshops? Because it is better than things like the subsistence farming that they were doing before. Why did we have a boom in technology? Do you think it is a coincidence that the first industrial revolution and the subsequent rapid technological development just so happen to have occurred after capitalism developed? The increased productivity does improve the well being of the many. The world is far better off today than it was only a few centuries ago: a few people getting incredibly wealthy does not mean that other people are not also getting more wealthy at the same time. Capitalism is a win-win.
    1
  408.  @Maksie0  I'm happy that they are improving their situation in life rather than scrabbling like their ancestors did. Mutually consenting exchange is not exploitation. If you think the labor of the people working in sweatshops is worth more than what they're getting, then by all means, employ them yourself for higher compensation. I'm not aware of any system that's superior to capitalism, especially so long as resources are scarce. It is capitalism and the technological innovation which it incentivizes which will be the best chance at solving climate change, something that we are already observing as the industrialized nations reduce their carbon emissions. How do you determine how much someone "should" be getting if not by mutual agreement among the people in question? Wealth is not a zero sum game, everyone can win.
    1
  409.  @Maksie0  Except that slavery is an unjust violation of property rights whereas mutually consenting employment is not. If socialism is so superior to capitalism, if workers owning the means of production and deciding things democratically is better, then why isn't that the primary mode of production already? There is nothing stopping workers from starting businesses together, nothing stopping the creation of worker coops, yet they by and large choose to work for someone else instead. A business owner cannot threaten to starve someone, starvation is a natural state that we must avoid by our choices, with taking minimum wage jobs not being the only choice that you could make. The cost of living in Bangladesh is also substantially lower than the cost of living in the US.
    1
  410. Capitalism is the economic system compatible with liberty.
    1
  411.  @h.hholmes3118  Clearly false.
    1
  412. How is it not? From what numbers I can see, Sweden is roughly 80% ethnic swedes.
    1
  413.  @deadonabed2875  So you're dismissing it by setting an unrealistically high hurdle. Got it.
    1
  414.  @Maksie0  No though.
    1