[American biased post, because that’s what I know and where I am]
Been screaming that capitalism is not the problem you are experiencing. Monopolies, or more to the point, cartels, have exploded in scope over the past 40-years. Think of a company you hate, a company that’s fucking you over, a company that’s fucking us ALL over. Bet they fit the bill.
Hate your job at Lowe’s? Go to Home Depot! wait… There’s a great family-owned, local hardware store, but I can’t afford to shop there.
Walgreens piss you off? Just go to CVS! well damn… New local pharmacy chain is really nice! They can’t take my insurance.
If you’re under 40, or maybe even under 50, I cannot relate how alien this all is, the words fail me. If you’re in your 20s or 30s, it’s easy to think it was always like this. Oh hell no it was not.
Along with allowing corporations unlimited political “speech”, i.e. campaign contributions, the proliferation of cartels will go down in history as America’s failing point. (Basically the same thing?)
News like the current entertainment mergers didn’t fucking happen. And here on lemmy we’re talking, with a straight face, about the ups and downs of the Netflix/Warner Bros./HBO merger. And if you’ll remember, Warner Bros./Time Warner/AOL was the largest merger in US history!
Everything in the post screams unfettered, unregulated capitalism as the underlying cause since it’s the system that allows and promotes this behavior.
Also as a 40+ year old, I can remember that this has been the case too since I remember the wal-marts moving in and killing every local business with everyone smiling about cheap Chinese goods. Same as it ever was.
Well, unfettered China will soon take over, since they don’t have the same issues.
I’m not even a China shill, I was very critical of China until.
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I got to see reports from my boss, his son, and some YouTube videos on how they are actually advancing, and how decent their society is becoming.
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I see how awful our countries are in general. (except Finland, Denmark, Norway, etc).
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Realize that they are wimning regardless, there’s no way we are overcoming their momentum. Say what you will about how good some country is, but this is no good! One country rulling the world is terrible, a recipe for the end times.
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The bitch is that we need to not only overcome capitalism and the right, but also the brand of liberal consultant that makes 6 figures a year blaming bad actors in defense of the system that makes them.
There’s a paradox I heard of that’s pretty relevant in this line of thought that is pretty transportable to most things. I heard it in the context of IT security.
It goes something like this: you buy security and after 2 or 3 years when you need to renew, nothing bad has happened, so it seems like you don’t need security. When in actual fact the extra security has been the reason there haven’t been any incidents.
So it’s almost impossible to prove that buying the security is helping without extensive analytics.
In many cases those analytics are either very difficult or impossible to get.
To demonstrate the transportable nature of this concept, let’s transpose it to vaccines.
If everyone is vaccinated, then nobody gets sick from those diseases, making it seem like the diseases are not a threat anymore, which means that vaccines are no longer useful.
Meanwhile, in all actual fact, the only reason why polio is so rare is because there is a safe and effective vaccine for it that everyone has taken (replace polio with whatever disease you want that has an effective vaccine).
It’s a paradox of: how do we prove this is working, without discontinuing it and possibly being eaten by rats/leopards/whatever.
If there’s only monopolies in the market then is their product the best on the market, or is everyone using it because there’s no alternatives?
Leaning that monopoly argument against capitalism, it’s almost certainly not the best product. When you have a captive audience, those that need your service and don’t have an alternative, there’s no incentive to innovate, or invest in improving the product at all. Do innovation stagnates so that corporations can maximize shareholder value; because the focus of a corporation isn’t to innovate, or improve what they do, their focus is always on extracting the most value for the least cost.
Therefore, monopolies will almost certainly lead to a sub-optimal product. The people that suffer for this are the users of that product. In the case of something like Google search, that’s basically everyone.
There’s a more modern term for this phenomenon: enshittification. Actively making a product worse specifically for the purposes of creating profits for shareholders.
Late stage capitalism is fun, isn’t it?
You’re just describing capitalist inevitabilities
Uncharacteristically self-aware of you to post this in the shitpost community.
The real problem is people. It doesn’t matter which system you live under greedy shitty people will find every loophole they can to increase their own wealth especially if the consequences aren’t seen or felt. It’s not being evil it’s just how people are.
if your instinct is to blame human nature, you are wrong. i mean, not wrong that human nature is flawed, but wrong in that you are effectively arguing there can never be a solution to anything.
solving problems requires tackling the human element. and often times means holding people accountable.
I didn’t mean to imply that there can’t be solutions, only that there can’t be solutions that don’t account for most people being selfish assholes.
Oh! then we agree, unregulated capitalism was very dumb.
Neoliberals didn’t do this solo.
Monopolies are bad in every sector with the exception of software development. Let me explain:
When you produce 5 cars, you have 5 cars. That’s 5 times as good as 1 car. So it makes sense to produce more cars.
When you have 5 programs (that each do the same), you have effectively 4 redundancies and you could get the same work done with 1 program. So, 5 programs is worth just as much as 1 program, and the other 4 are a waste. So it is more efficient to only write every software once. This also reduces bloat and confusion. For example, if iOS and Android had more common code basis, it would probably be better for everyone.
Consider this meme, but with products instead of standards:
This is why monopolies make sense in software development. Google developed a lot of software, including Android, which doesn’t need to be developed 10x times by 10 different companies. It only needs to be developed once. That’s the difference between hardware (cars) and software.
Google based Android off Linux. Apple based IOS off BSD. Both of those were the result of collaborative work between thousands of millions of contributors.
Frameworks exist that assist in making apps for either or both, just like they exist to build games for multiple consoles etc.
Meanwhile, Google has now declared that they will require developers register signing key WITH THEM in order to make software that will run on Android (regardless of whether it’s installed via their store or another) and has been taking steps away from providing the the necessary codebase under AOSP etc that allow for third-party projects that were based on Android
Google has also transitioned readily to “rent” based services such as YouTube while killing off Google Play Music etc (such actually allowed purchases/downloads of media). Both companies are already heavily investing in generative AI.
Do you think that once they have control of all app signing they’ll allow apps that circumvent their advertising or data-harvesting?
This doesn’t “make sense”, it makes us pay more to a digital landlord who throws around their weight to lock us in further and further while using their increasing wealth to buy up or crush all the competition. We’re accepting chains of convenience today in trade for restrictions and exploitation tomorrow.
I can think of one company that holds a dominating market position and has been somewhat benevolent, and that’s Valve. They don’t buy out competition, they’ve been active contributors to open-source (to the extent that they’ve made gaming on Linux actually viable and good), and they often seem listen to their customers in order to improve. They still do take a goodly % of sales revenue from developers who list with them though.
Is that Cory Doctorow?
The real problems is problems.
Wrong community.
Its a failure of government and a failure of culture not a result of the economic system.
Destinction without difference. Government and economic culture is part of the economic system.
Any system, in which the denizens of that system exhibit greed and selfishness, is likely going to produce similar problems. I really don’t think people are accurate about the feeling that “Obtaining and hoarding valuable things” is an act borne out of the laws of our current society.
I really don’t think it’s just “economic culture” as you’ve described.
I really don’t think it’s just “economic culture” as you’ve described.
I didn’t say it is just economic culture that is the issue here…
I really don’t think people are accurate about the feeling that “Obtaining and hoarding valuable things” is an act borne out of the laws of our current society.
Also true, but what is? Is your point that it is human nature? I would disagree there, humans have the capacity of acting against greed and selfishness. Question is why they are so often acting greedy and selfish then?
My answer would be two options with both apply to some degree, and there might be more:
- Resources are scarce and distributed non equally. So hoarding gives power over others
- The system incentivizes greedy behavior, by it’s structure and rules. Either by actively, by giving greedy people direct rewards, or passively by not punishing greedy behavior.
Other ideas?
The point being, it’s pretty specifically American culture. Disregard politics, and only obsess over it when enraged about an issue. Hate on anything that might benefit people you don’t know.
There are millions of humans on this planet to which those behaviors are bafflingly mad. Many of those places essentially operate under capitalist structure, with rules and safeguards in place to ensure government stays responsible for basic safety and competition remains fair. The battle to keep that structure stable is constant, but gets easier when people at all levels care about it.
Basically, I couldn’t claim capitalism is perfect, but whether replacing the system or not, you need to address the greedy human culture beneath it.
Basically, I couldn’t claim capitalism is perfect, but whether replacing the system or not, you need to address the greedy human culture beneath it.
Chicken, egg.
System changes leads to cultural change leads to system change.
You cannot just change the culture, but you can change the system.
system incentivizes greedy behavior
Got one that doesn’t? And I don’t mean communism in small tribes. I need something to rule 10’s of millions.
No. There are no perfect systems. Every system will require constant vigilance and adaption to work. The point is that the goal of disincentivizing greedy behavior is actually clearly stated and done.
these things are linked you know? the failure of one shows the failure of the others
No. The same government in any other economic system would produce similarly worse outcomes. We can see its not related to the economic system by looking around the world at all the capitalist economies without these issues.
America has these monopolies because they intentional chose to ignore the law and not break them up. The culture of the people in government was and still is rotten.
Its a failure of government and a failure of culture not a result of the economic system.
if the system does not account for its government, or its culture, then the system is wrong, and will fail.
you can not expect success from a system that fails when up against human nature, its literal purpose is to interface with humans.
that being said, no system lasts forever and should be considered only as useful as the how effective freedoms are and the length of time it can be maintained
Saying capitalism isn’t the problem but monopolies are is like saying a cancerous tumor isn’t the problem, but the aggressive metastasis is.
“Stop saying he was killed by a gun! It was the blood loss that did him in!”
Bullets don’t kill people! It’s the hydrostatic shock caused by Newtonian forces that is the real villain!
God damn physics ruining everything.
It wasn’t capitalism that that said bail out large companies when they make bad investments. It wasn’t capitalism that said hand out free loans to any company who asks during covid. It’s not capitalism that prohibited community based ISPs.
Alright. What was it then?
Government policy.
Corporate socialism. In real capitalism there would be no government bailouts.
It’s still a shit economic system, but it’s mostly shit because shitty people worm their way to the top. Same with every instance of communism or socialism.
“that’s not real capitalism” now, huh?
You call it “socialism” because it’s failing, but there isn’t anything socialist about it; it’s just late stage capitalism. Capitalism is a system of concentrating power, and this is what happens when you concentrate power.
It wasn’t capitalism in the same way that “it wasn’t real communism”.
Sure, I guess maybe, but it’s the inevitable outcome of the processes that define capitalism. Just as all kittens become cats, this is what all capitalism becomes.
“Capitalism isn’t the problem, THIS is”
* points to the main thing capitalism does *
Look, non-sterile surgical procedures are perfectly safe. But wow, those rampant and definitely unrelated fatal infections sure are a bummer, huh?
Capitalism is still the problem. This is a aymptom of that problem
Not just a symptom, basically the goal everyone is trying to reach, it’s like the thing to do, the only metric.
