I'd say it's more like disguised feudalism. We're all peasants for the few kings and queens that have all the money at the top.
I don't think people actually agree on the definition of capitalism itself, I just looked it up and was a little surprised how definitive it is:
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
If you asked whether capitalism is a political system, at least in my random polling, 2 out of 9 respondents said No.
Yes Marx formalized this opinion.
It's the owners of the land and the means of production that control all of the wealth.
Now it’s the owners of the holding companies who own the owners of all the rest doing the controlling.
Capitalism is now playing 3D chess
Trickle up economics
I caught myself mid laugh before realizing the reality of that statement.
More like a firehose
A firehose in the sky that sucks the rain back in.
Honestly one of the reasons I fell for a pyramid scheme coming out of high school.
A friend invited me and I went to shit on it and get him out, but the main guy's whole thing was "everything is a pyramid scheme, at least here you have the chance to build a pyramid beneath you."
Obviously there were other reasons as old as time, but the argument of "so what, your 'regular job' is already a pyramid scheme you can't win" was pretty rattling to a teenager in 2011.
The difference between a pyramid scheme and a good business is where your money comes from, in a pyramid scheme it comes from the people at the bottom of the pyramid, in a business it comes from selling goods and/or services, that's not saying I agree with big business, but one is profiting off of legitimate customers, the other is profiting off it's own "employees". I nearly got caught into one a few years ago too, until I realized what it was, at that point they had only taken a couple $100 for the interview and sign up stage, i had to block my card for them to never get access again, because even though i didnt complete sign up, thwy kept charging me monthly
If anything this understates the problem.
True, because it's also a giant Ponzi scheme. We pick up new debt today to pay off debt from yesterday, and we hope expanding GDP and inflation will always offset the difference.
Like social security?
You're not forced to take on that debt though, nor is the debt unpayable unless you take on more debt. Some people put themselves into a ponzi-like situation either through poor financial decision making or circumstances so shit that they can't do any better, but the average person doesn't need to take out a loan on a freaking pair of nikes or even a car or house. It's a cultural norm to get a mortgage, but if you do the math it often doesn't make sense to and isn't anywhere close to mandatory. At most you could argue that the US government debt works that way, but even that's iffy and depends on your geopolitical outlook.
It fundamentally is NOT a pyramid scheme. In a pyramid scheme there is no actual product or service of value and simply extracts wealth from the people in lower tiers. Value, or wealth, is simply the byproduct of an equitable transaction between two or more parties.
Except that you're describing commerce, not capitalism. Capitalism is the idea that the commerce has value, and that one can own the value of the commercial activity. Further, the value of the business is tied to it's growth.
Further, products and services are never exchanged in an equitable transaction between two parties, because capitalism necessitates a third party, the capitalist. The capitalist must acquire products and services from employees for less than their true value, and then sell them to consumers for more than their true value.
And because capitalism demands growth, one or both of those two margins must continue to expand. This means workers must be pressured to work for less and less, which is why the capitalist opposes social services, universal healthcare, and affordable housing. This also means the capitalism opposes consumer protections, environmental protections, and taxes that provide a functioning society that might interfere with their growth.
Now what happens when every producer and consumer is fighting for the same margins, the same advantages, and the same growth? Then the capitalist seeks new avenues for new capital and new capitalists. Building business on ensuring the growth of business for other capitalists. Selling the idea that you, too, can join us at the top of the pyramid, all the while kicking down ladders they climbed to get there.
So no, the system itself isn't a pyramid scheme. It's just an idea that encourages pyramid schemes because it relies on impossible growth, like a cancer eating away at society.
Further, products and services are never exchanged in an equitable transaction between two parties, because capitalism necessitates a third party, the capitalist.
Hang out with small business owners and you'll find lots of examples of two party exchanges. The closest thing to a third party is when there's a contract dispute that involves arbitration or a lawsuit.
The capitalist must acquire products and services from employees for less than their true value, and then sell them to consumers for more than their true value.
This isn't capitalism, this is employment. Employment has been a feature of most economic systems over the past few thousand years. It's important to ignore Marxist theory on employment and alienation because is relies on cherry picking facts to create bizarre and blatantly false narratives.
This sentence also packs in a misunderstanding of how value is generated in all economic systems, not just capitalism. The migrant worker is an economic staple in most (if not all) societies that engaged in agriculture. Take the Roman economy for example, migrant workers lack any property ownership themselves and so must sell labor for money. In the absence of tools, property and seeds, they are not able to generate anything of value for anyone else. A wealthy Roman farm owner has more land than they can work themselves. Without workers, their land has some value, but much less. When the farmer purchases labor for money, more food is produced than was consumed by both parties over that time period. If an excess of food is not generated, then somebody starves. The same thing holds for McDonalds. McDonalds owns a trademark, a marketing organization and a supply chain; all of which are useless without a restaurant. A franchise owner purchases access to the systems that McDonalds owns in order to create a restaurant. The restaurant is useless without a fry cook. The fry cook operates the kitchen gear in the restaurant in order to produce food for consumers. It's important to note that without the restaurant, the marketing and the supply chain, the labor of the fry cook is work very little.
And because capitalism demands growth
The demand for growth is not specific to capitalism. Economic systems that don't exhibit growth either can't physically support a growing population (with things like food or shelter), or the average standard of living decreases. Both of these situations are difficult to sustain for any political system.
No, fractional reserve banking demands endless growth because debts can't be paid off with interest since the extra money to pay the interest didn't initially exist. Therefore, banks have to lend out more money they don't have so the prior debts can be paid off but in the process they create more debt. But those following loans come with more interest which leads to the insatiable need for more growth in the economy by loaning more money.
To be more specific, fractional-reserve banking system creates this giant pyramid scheme, not capitalism per se.
Please explain, how exactly is fractional-reserve banking a pyramid scheme?
Because it allows banks to lend out money they don't have and when the banks lobby hard enough to completely remove whats left of the gold standard, the sky's the limit for lending out money. Creating money out of thin air increases inflation. However, in a weird way it impoverishes the lower classes while inriching the elite class because the latter tends to better connected and therefor closer to the "monetary spigot". This allows the elite class to buy up everything(land, companies, lobby/bribe governments)from the top down like a game of pacman.
That's a valid point, though I still wouldn't call it a pyramid scheme.
No, it is not. It is brutal in many ways. But that it is not. Neither is socialomswor communism.
Pyramid schemes are zero-sum. I steal and gain, you lose. Capitalism and even communism are not zero-sum games. They are net-positive. They involve people making goods and services for others.
Pyramid schemes don't have to be zero-sum. All you need are assholes at the top trying to suck up as many resources as they can. Imagine the shape that makes.
A hexagon!
They're zero sum because money is being exchanged, but the person losing money isn't getting anything in return for the exchange. Someone is just stealing from someone else (one person loses, anotber gains). No matter how many people are added to the scheme the mechanics remain the same.
An economy, be it a capitalist or communist one, involves the exchange of money but in exchange for goods and services. Both parties of the transaction gain from it.
Now, it could be argued that the wrong people gain the most from capitalism. That's another argument. But the system isn't zero sum, the way a ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme is.
I think you can say is a pyramid scheme in the way you can't really make money if you aren't making money for someone upper on the ladder, even if are an independent business owner, you still have loans to pay or equipment that is sold by a corporation.
If we take into consideration the destruction of the ecosystems necessary to sustain human life, capitalism is a net-negative.
Before Capitalism Humanity drove mammoths into exctintion, and that was a hunter-gatherer society.
https://www.earth.com/news/humans-drove-woolly-mammoths-to-extinction/
What I mean with this is that the effect of humanity in the environment is an human issue independent to the economic system issue the humans use.
and with a disappointing lack of giant pyramids, no less!
We need more polloman
I would say this about the stock market
And social security
care to expand on that at least a little? i dont follow.
DAE Capitalism bad?
omg me
Yes!
I've seen several thought experiments about capitalism, and letting it run to its extreme conclusion.
- Attempt one, with the theoretical best starting conditions, devolved into feudalism
- Attempt two, which assumed people knew how attempt one ended up and where they wanted to do everything they could to prevent that from happening again, concluded towards theocracy, since capitalism ignores religion, which can become a coercive power structure, separate from capitalism or government.
- Attempt three, where everyone knew how the previous two experiments went, did away with money, and replaced it with an economy based on service contracts, evolved into communism.
To all the people here ranting about monetary debt: its not an issue. Money isn't designed to hold value in the long term. It's a feature, not a bug.
It's just really unfortunate for those who play the game as if money were an asset. It's meant for transactions, not for storage.
How so though? This sounds like a statement that's meant to be flashy but doesn't actually hold up. Pyramid schemes are characterized by a) an eventual lack of ability to recruit more people, b) recruitment rather than a product or a service being the driver, and c) a person at the bottom left with nothing, including recourse. Capitalism, even completely free capitalism, doesn't work like that unless you specifically rig it to do so. That's called "corruption".
an eventual lack of ability to recruit more people
Global population growth is slowing and predicted to halt within the next few decades.
The modern economy has always relied on an environment of growth, which will now end. In some ways this resembles a pyramid scheme; in the past anyone making investments in the economy could count on a larger new generation of people coming into the market needing to exchange their labor for those hoarded resources. Since this is no longer going to be the case, new entrants to the market are going to be getting a lot less for their effort than they may have expected based on past trends.
Like half the population of the world are poor, every industry is using behind the doors sweatshops. Essentially slavery. While not a perfect synonym, I think it makes sense
Some retirement saving schemes may be a pyramid scheme. When the population growth stagnates, there will not be enough young people to produce for everyone.
This is the ideal shower thought imo. Concise, absolutely true, and something you wouldn't realize on a daily basis (at least not in these terms)
Yes, but you're going to find the same thing with Communism.
Too many shitty greedy people at the top, too many plebs with fuck all at the bottom.
And while you may be thinking "I could live on a commune, spend an hour a day growing our own food and have all that time left for whatever else I want", you'll quickly find you can't grow your own 65" OLED television or whatever other comforts you've become accustomed to.
The billionaires need reining in, and better distribution of wealth all around the bottom, but capitalism ain't going anywhere.
Communism isn’t the same as a tech-less agrarian society
Communism doesn't mean there isn't commerce, it just means you communally own the means to produce it, and the profits from it
in that there are hierarchical meritocratic levels of achievement?
or that there are extractive processes which benefit the top at the expense of those lower?
Capitalism is a scheme where finite raw materials are being extracted and where finite nature is being destroyed - both on the planetary scale; once we reach the end, it will be the end.
That's crony capitalism.
actually all economies are zero sum game. down the drain everything is about ressources rather than labour or energy. the later are the means to transforming the resources. what counts at the end is how much you have to survive and thrive.
You couldn't possibly be more wrong. Whenever two people engage in a transaction and walk away happy, value has been created. A zero sum game would be if the economy were a pie of static shape, where if you have more then I have less. But it isn't like that. The pie grows, and every time there is an equitable transaction with value being created, the pie gets bigger and everyone is better off. That's the opposite of a zero sum game.
So when 2 people engage in a transaction and walk with different feelings? Kind of like the theft of my surplus value funding bezos latest yacht? I will take thank you very much . Or will I ? Perhaps there is no such thing as equality in transactions under an opressing system with the sole purpose of hoarding wealth? It's very much a zero sum game , you should perhaps read a book ? Since we are on that kind of level at the moment...
The Pie is of static shape, and that shape is all the resource planet is holding, and any part party who has more of those ressources means others will have less, the economy 'wealth" of the british empire didn't grow because it has engaged in equitable transaction with the colonised world (you can never have equitable __ insert something here __ ), they needed more ressources to grow and those ressources were extracted elsewhere
Just the same how the rich countries today aren't rich because they engage in equitable transactions with the poor world, but because the mecanisme that are put in place makes so those "equitable transactions" favours the hoarding of wealth on one side more than the other.
Being zero sum gain doesn't, a pyramid scheme, make.
Capitalism is nothing but allowing freedom and allowing property (in contrast to posession)
At this point, "Capitalism" feels as undefined to the left as "Woke" is to the right. It may be bad, but people just put whatever they don't like into a box and call it "Capitalism".
Atleast it works unlike covert fascist ideas like Marxism/Communism
"HEY LOOK EVERYONE, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I AM TALKING ABOUT!!"
Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
Communism is covert fascism? Why then did fascists round up and kill communists? The two are wholeheartedly opposed to each other.
We might have different ideas of "works" my friend
Of course it works, for the 1%
From my limited understanding, Marxism comes off as more of a lense to analyze politics and human behavior than an actual system. It also comes off as not very fascist, but fascist seeming things can come out of it, depending on your perspective. I will admit I'm not very educated in regards to political science, and I've just begun my foray into Marxist theory.
💀
it works
citation needed
We might have different ideas of "works" my friend
Communism works, just look at North Korea.
And there are no outside forces that have influenced North Korea either.
It's hilarious how these tankies are agreeing with your comment not knowing it's sarcasm lol
fascist
Marxist/ Communist
Those two things are opposites…you buzzword concern troll
Opposite likes north and south are opposites? Or opposites like apples and oranges are opposites.
Fascism and communism are both:
- authoritarian attempts
- to improve socieity
- by radically changing economic relations
- from consensual trade to slavery
- to support a massive war effort
- designed to get the rest of the world under the same authoritarian regime
- resulting in millions of battlefield deaths
- and the deaths of millions of enslaved citizens
- by overwork, disease, starvation
- and outright systematic execution
But one’s “left wing” and the other is “right wing” so they could be described as “opposites”.
