Capitalism is the best system we've got because capitalism killed every other system, not due to any virtue on capitalism's part.
I'd be down to try just about anything else at this point.
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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This serial killer is the best doctor weve got, because hes wearing an eye necklace of every other hospital employee.
At first blush that sounds insane, but reality these days is giving The Onion a run for its money.
He may not have ever been to medical school (except during the 05 massacres) but he can pass for a nearly competent orthopedjc surgeon!
Killing other systems is a form of "virtue" though, because as idealistic as anyone wants to be, whatever system we make will exist in a competitive ecosystem. Want to make a functional communism? Well, it has to be able to survive assaults from capitalism. A system cannot just be "moral" or "good", it also has to be strong or ruthless enough to protect it's existence from the many forces which will seek to destroy it.
That's why I advocate for capitalism with significant socialist policies, strong safeguards, and extreme restrictions. Tax the rich and give everyone UBI. Make the minimum wage a multiple of the inflation factor (and fix "inflation" to actually measure how the cost of everything has increased over time).
Knowing lemmy, most people will stop reading six words into this comment.
I would prefer a better system from the ground up. I'm willing to compromise for making the existing system not suck (which would actually take more work but I think will be easier to sell to the general populace).
Of course, this is the overly idealistic side of me, the part that still believes that playing by the rules is the correct thing to do. I'm more likely to believe the anarchists these days. It's amazing how far left I've moved In the past handful of years, I used to think of myself as liberal (actual liberal not what most people who call themselves liberal are).
At this point I'm willing to try just about anything else, and that includes burning it all down and starting over.
Yes, capitalism has been forced on us at gunpoint, literally (as in Graeber and Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything)
And we literally had Democratic Socialism under FDR in the 30's and 40's that fixed many of the problems of capitalism, until Reagan broke it all down in the 80s
Boomers experience was literally growing up in the solution, yet they fucked it up for everyone.
That wasn't democratic socialism, it was social democracy. Seems like a small difference but the impact is huge. Democratic socialism eschews capitalism entirely while social democracy preserves capitalism with heavy regulation. Boomers didn't grow up in the solution, they grew up with the symptoms of the disease being treated, but it was no cure. Because the underlying causes of inequality were not addressed they eventually overcame and reversed the regulations designed to keep them in check. We should learn from the mistake and go beyond half measures next time.
I mean the same thing.
The main benefit of capitalism is the free market that it establishes. But it requires regulation to prevent control being centralizes by private oligarchs.
Communism has the same problem of central control of capital and markets, but in their case, its state connected oligarchs.
If we could have the free market without the incentives to centralize wealth and control, I would be very interested.
The main benefit of capitalism is the free market that it establishes. But it requires regulation to prevent control being centralizes by private oligarchs.
The "free market" and regulations are mutually exclusive. You can't have both, unless you consider a "free market" to exist on a spectrum between no regulations and maximum regulations and draw an arbitrary line between free and not free.
Communism has the same problem of central control of capital and markets, but in their case, its state connected oligarchs.
This is an issue with vanguardist marxism-leninism, not necessarily communism. I understand that this is the ideological strain of communism that people - especially Americans - are most familiar with for historical reasons, but there are many other strains that oppose centralized command and control economies, preferring more federal and democratic or consensus-based systems. In fact, the Bolsheviks initially rallied around the slogan "all power to the soviets." Soviets are workers' councils - the primary decision-making bodies and drivers of the Russian revolution - and they operated independently, freely associating with one another by choice. It was only after the revolution succeeded in siezing the state that the soviets were dissolved and replaced with "one big soviet" which was loyal to Lenin. It was briefly still somewhat decentralized and democratic (at least relative to what came before) until Stalin came to power and rapidly centralized the economic and political structure of the soviet union.
If we could have the free market without the incentives to centralize wealth and control, I would be very interested.
What exactly do you mean by "free market?" If we go by the conventional definition of a free market (capitalism without any regulations or checks of any kind) then what you're asking for here is fundamentally impossible. The economic system of capitalism is one that creates the incentives to centralize wealth and control by allowing - and then enforcing - private ownership of the means of production.
I think it important to distinguish between a free trade market, which should be largely unregulated. People should be able to buy and sell goods on an open market.
Capital markets, or ownership and control of wealth should be heavily regulated.
Derivatives should be outlawed and stock trading should have minimum holding periods of 12 months or more. Return it to a platform for making investments and raising capital, rather than a gambling and market manipulation platform.
I would also change the law that the duties of publicly traded company's board and executives is not profit, but the long term sustainability of the organization.
I think it important to distinguish between a free trade market, which should be largely unregulated. People should be able to buy and sell goods on an open market.
Capital markets, or ownership and control of wealth should be heavily regulated.
Huh, what's interesting about this is that you've basically arrived at a communist/anarchist idea on your own, but are describing it using Libertarian / Neoliberal Capitalist terminology. You're describing different types of property and saying that one type should be regulated and the other type shouldn't. Anti-capitalists distinguish between private property (the means of production privately owned and involved in an economic enterprise employing wage labor (i.e. factories, offices, farms)) and personal property (consumer goods or goods produced by an individual (i.e. books, art, jewelry)), and believe that the former should be abolished (or one could say regulated to require collective ownership of such property by the workers) while the latter should be unregulated or lightly regulated.
In short, you've independently come to the same conclusion that anarchists and communists came to, but are describing it in a strange way.
I am not well versed in the terminology of Marx, but I do think given the age, it can do with some updating for modern times.
I am not sure you need to distinguish between private and personal property.
I think how I would describe it, is that you get physical goods and services that should be largely unregulated. First order trade.
But when it comes to derived or abstracted goods, like shares, investments, currencies, they should be regulated to ensure they stay closely tied to the physical assets they represent.
In terms of property, I do see some issues when as automation and knowledge becomes more prominent as a means of production, we will need to switch to a different way of thinking.
Something along the lines where knowledge becomes public domain knowledge much sooner than under current laws.
Then approaching taxation of private property and corporations differently, where they are taxed based on the value of assets. You would also stop taxing on revenue and profit. This way they will always have and incentive to make sure they are using assets effectively, or selling it and not just squat on it, to prevent others from having it. Those taxes would then be used to fund universal basic income.
communism is stateless and classless and moneyless
In theory, in practice, it was a tool for state control over ownership.
If democratic socialism had fixed the problems with capitalism, then capitalism wouldn't have won.
Better? Sure. The solution? Sadly it wasn't.
It only started breaking down when people stopped maintaining it. People grew complacent, but not the 1% they were busy, motivated and ruthless.
Nothing in human society lasts, unless you maintain it. Even capitalism.
I like the pre-internet days when everyone just blamed their dad, not all dads.
Did we?
How do you think we ended up with a weekend, overtime and the right for woman to vote?
The greatest generation striked, fought and died against the capitalist billionaire oligarchs and monarchs to get it.
...women got the right to vote in Australia over 20 years before my GG grandma was born....
You're assuming everyone here is American to the point of using an acronym like FDR. I know who you're talking about but still
edit: the person who you're responding to is Australian based on their instance and I'm Canadian
Valid point, thank you.
With many things, most of the western world tends to track the trends that the US is doing. (Something I hope Trump cures people from)
I am South African myself, so I should be clear in my language.
It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism
Maybe if you don't know what capitalism is. A lot of people seem to confuse capitalism with markets. It's had to imagine a world without markets, but capitalism is just an ownership system. It's easy to imagine a world made up of cooperatives. It's basically the same world we already have but everyone gets paid more and there are no shareholders.
There's nothing stopping people from working for or with cooperatives or not working for or with corporations. It's just that most people can't be bothered to care. If everyone stopped buying from corporations, corporations would die pretty quick. If everyone bought from cooperatives, they'd be a lot more stable. We're only picking winners and losers via government contracts. The res of the economy is a free for all.
Shows a real lack of imagination.
On purpose, yes. Their way of life requires it.
Capitalism is the best system at eliminating other systems before they eliminate it.
It's because of propaganda. That phrase, and (in the US) the idea that "we are the greatest country in the world" is planted very deep in our minds. That means that no matter how bad things get here, we are assured that nothing better is possible.
Worst part is that we do not even know if we hit the point of no return :(
Whoever says this has not played a fallout game (or watched the show). At some point the only way for evil companies to continue to chase infinite growth is to create the situations that make them rich. This works out terribly when it applies to weapons, bunkers, pharmaceuticals, even the news is incentivised to see the world burn.
Time for some more Chamelling !
But this is not necessarily capitalism. This is Trump not wanting to go to prison. I know the sentiment in Lemmy is super anti capitalist and with good reason, but let's not fool ourselves. There's a literal Pedophile in Charge trying to flood the zone.
Trump didn't cause climate change mate.
It's not clear what the OP is talking about. It could be the nukes, but it could also be the return to fossil fuels and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement by Trump, "mate".
Well for starters not everything in the world relates to Trump, so it seems unlikely that it would be directly and only about Trump and not the broader implications of capitalism's man-made extinction event we are currently in via climate change.
But sure, Trump.
It was literally the latest news not even a week ago, what are you on about. This whole year has been about the US shitting on everything. Tf are you on about?
This tweet is from 2019 for a start.
And yet you're posting it in 2026? The fuck is that about?
Because capitalism is still fucking killing us and fucknuts are still arguing it's a good system.
How is this so hard to understand?
How is it now about capitalism when we just had a scare about nukes and everything else going on? God, you people are so obnoxious.
The tweet is literally fucking mentioning capitalism????
And you call us obnoxious because you refuse to read and instead try to make it out like Trump is the worst thing in the world and not the global system of exploitation that is killing us all?
Grow the fuck up mate, fucking pathetic act.
No, no, you're right. My bad for not being meticulous when reading your misleading shit from 2016 and focusing on more pressing matters like a power-tripping asshole threatening nukes just a few days ago. My absolute bad for confusing those two by assuming Lemmy is a website about current events when it's consistently stuck in the past. It was all me for browsing this fucking site full of assholes.
Nothing is fucking misleading, the criticisms in the tweet are are relevant today as they were 5 years ago.
And this isn't a news community, why you would only expect cutting edge content is wild.
I said you're right, is that not enough? Nothing is misleading about a tweet from 2016 that overlaps with current events today on a site that focuses 90% about US news all day, every day, after we had a pretty serious scare. You've done nothing wrong. It's my fault for not being meticulous when consuming your outdated shit. My bad for making reasonable assumptions about what looks like current political commentary and skipping over a date. Congrats, you win. My fucking bad.
You appear to be the only one who didn't understand OP.
Trump is a symptom of a much broader issue, he is not the cause.
He did not create racism or white supremacy but he's been able to take advantage of both while increasing hardships on the white populace who voted for him.
He did not create the housing crisis. That's been an ongoing issue for decades, a problem that has gotten worse post-2008 and left unaddressed by two Democratic presidents.
He did not create the institutionalized ponzi scheme that is the stock market but he's taken advantage of it to maximum benefit, likewise many federal level legislators.
He did not invent judicial or government corruption but has used both to his advantage.
He did not create ICE but he's using them to bolster hin image to his foolish followers.
He did not create the military industrial complex or the western fossil fuel industry that uses them to do their bidding.
He's a problem but he's far from being THE problem.