Capitalism

[prime]

I hear variants of this a lot:

I don't know if capitalism, has ever been given the opportunity to succeed. I like it is a concept and an idea, but I don't know anywhere it's ever truly been practiced.

Capitalism is an economic system. A society also needs political, legal, and social systems, as well as culture and some kind of biological/genetic plan.

This means that "pure capitalism" can only exist within a market, and a market can only exist in a society, so you will never get a pure state.

However, the closer you get to that state, the more functional your economy is.

[prime]

The root error comes from the assumption people will cooperate with the principle willingly. Once you assume most people will exploit any system for personal gain when they can it becomes evident communism is not a workable system without a totalitarian government. Even then people will generally do the bare minimum so you get poverty.

Capitalism exploits the inherent selfishness of individuals for the greater good of society.

1. Communism is not workable because equality is a fiction. To have equality, you must take from the productive, creative, and wise and give to the unproductive, careerist, and insane or dumb.

2. Capitalism uses self-interest as a motivator. However, capitalism is only part of a society; it also has social, legal, and political systems. These inevitably use capitalism in their self-interest as well, hence you need some force beyond monetary interest to keep the society together, like monarchism and culture.

[prime]

It might seem I have morality only in mind (which I admit I have a lot of) but the overlooking that oppression *also works* is exactly the kind of positions I don't start to justify.

Maturity requires that you do. "Justify" is not relevant; the question is what is real. Different systems work at different efficiencies with different upsides and downsides.

Suffering works incredibly 'well' and is not good.

Depends on who is suffering. Natural selection makes the incompetent suffer; democracy, socialism, etc make the competent suffer.

This is just one example, there is more - even if it's through 'softer' and more economic ways of stealing / cheating from people (like "planned obsolescence" etc etc etc).

Progressive taxation is theft from the competent to give to the incompetent; flat taxation or consumption taxes make more sense.

AGREE ON THESE THINGS / THEY ARE NOT GOOD?
☑️ planned obsolescence

When taxes get too high, companies cut corners. Remove taxes, unions, lawsuits, and other drama and this goes away. Before the unions took over, this was not really a thing.

☑️ debt-based society (using new people like a ponzi-scheme)

This exists because of the tax-and-spend cycle. See the Keynesian circular Ponzi scheme.

☑️ big profits not shared with workers and overall society - centralising worlds resources within a few compared to everyone else getting worse off / losing to privatisation

Workers need fair wages and reasonable cost of living. Taxation impedes both. No need for profit-sharing. Wealth is concentrated in every system; the question is whether you concentrate it among people who do good things (aristocrats, WASP elite) or clowns (techbros, Soros).

☑️ locking people out once they "build it" for others - private people hold the keys at the end and can rent it, while others get little / can only just get by / need to take on more debt while working for others.

Sounds like a cost of living problem.