Asklemmy

Capitalism has been touted as superior to the alternatives (Socialism, Communism, etc) b/c it has been claimed to be "self-regulating" and "self-correcting" and "even if we don't understand why, it fixes itself"--basically the only choice among bad ones that, given our collective small brains, has any chance of sustaining itself and society in the absence of an ability of individuals or government to do so intentionally.

What it really is is an opportunity to stay anonymous while gaming the system, all the while convincing everyone else that they too can game the system (thereby being gamed). It is not a net benefit to society when taken to extremes.

Capitalism is great for the consumer in the micro. If there is a coffee shop on your street that sucks, and you start a coffee shop two blocks away to compete with it with your better coffee, you are participating in the version of capitalism that "works as intended."

It doesn't work in the macro. When, instead of continuing to manage your mom & pop business that barely breaks even, you vertically integrate, buy up or otherwise destroy your competition, and then reduce the quality of your product to bare minimums in favor of profits and shareholder value and growth, you take capitalism to an extreme that makes everyone else (the consumers, the workers, the would-be-competitors) have a worse quality of life.

People prefer better quality of life. Capitalism in the modern age is so far in that macro extreme that it no longer makes people's lives better. East Palestine train derailment as an example... why would they prioritize safety over cost cutting? Bam, a town is cancerous. It's not unreasonable for people to point at a corruptible system and blame it for the corruption that exists.

Problem is, people are corruptible, so whatever alternative we think is better, someone will come along and ruin it for personal gain.

I guess most pro-capitalism people don't mind corporate-controlled social media, and so have stayed on reddit. I don't know why there aren't more anti-monopolistic pro-capitalism libertarians here, though...

1. Friends and family bankrupted by basic medical needs;
2. Friends WITH medical insurance unable to afford basic medications like insulin or asthma control inhalers;
3. The increased atomization of society has led to a collapse of community in most of my country: people don’t care about each other because they can’t because they don’t have the time or money;
4. It has driven us and continues to drive us towards the complete collapse of the biological systems that sustain our planet at an ever increasing rate.

The only thing people can point and do point to is “oh but more people have more cheap commodities.” Great! At the expense of the common dignity of man and the ecosystems in which he depends, an ever smaller class of bloated egotists has gotten rich beyond comprehension while the rest of the world literally burns and melts in the name of increasing fortunes already beyond any and all conception of need. At the same time, the life of the average person is marked by degraded environments, exposures to industrial toxins, has their profession increasingly made precarious, has the cost of living increase while wages stagnate or shrink, and now is plagued by disasters directly resulting from the climate change a fossil carbon economy has caused.

What about any of that should I like? That I can eat a hamburger for $10 that is mostly ammonia-cleansed meat filler…?

Capitalism is currently causing vastly more problems than it is solving. It is concentrating wealth and resources in the hands of the few while the poor and working class suffer.

In addition to sustainability concerns others have mentioned, capitalism is also inherently unjust. You earn money by having money and many of those who work the hardest are also the poorest.

Add time goes on, capitalism constantly needs more and more restrictions placed on it to not utterly destroy society. Child labor laws, minimum wage, worker rights... capitalism is inherently against all of that because it makes less money.

Even today the rights that have been fought for over the past century, capitalism is trying to erode away, all in the name of greater profits. Child labor is back on the menu in some states. Minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. In the USA they've discovered that dying people are a captive audience, so they can charge them ridiculous money out the ass for whatever will keep them alive. Like, what are they going to do, go home and do surgery themselves? Wait until Black Friday for a sale on MRI scans? lol.

Nearly every right and freedom for anyone below the top 0.1% of earners is a continuous battle against capitalism to maintain.

You seem to have arrived late to the party and just assumed 21st century Western society is just the natural state of capitalism. No, this is capitalism after centuries of people fighting for their rights. Seriously, you need to study some history. Especially what life was like in the Victorian or early industrial era.

I started off as capitalist. I believed the fairy tales from silicon valley: If I work hard enough, I might be able to rise to the top, not only able to leave my hometown or my country, but also I might even able to buy a cheaper sports car. Used, but it might be fun to refurbish, or even customize. I even had a paranoid fear of communism, due to fear mongering from the right.

Then reality hit hard. First, I had to learn that the people I idolized didn't just make some mistakes, but were outright evil, while the competition isn't much better. Then I had struggle with trying to find a job, especially due to my inability of making up a story of long time employment history and achievements. And then I had to drop out from college, because I couldn't do my mandatory internship time.

When I said we should at least do some regulations to not let these things to run amok, the answer was that it would be "communism", and instead we should left it up to the free market. And if the market doesn't have problem with it, then I'm in the wrong.

Then I found Libertarian Socialist Rants on YouTube, the forerunner of what we know as "lefttube". The rest is history.