Capitalism is a game where only a few people get to win.
We have also seen time and time again that it is a game that is able to manipulate and change whatever ideology or behaviour you have to work towards its own benefit.
So the only way to actually “win” is to not play the game.
Right now that seems impossible because it is a massive collective action problem, however this whole platform is a testament to show that it’s possible to overcome that kind of problem.
Reddit is a dominant platform that is starting to destroy itself. People are in turn finding alternatives such as Lemmy to satisfy the need that Reddit once did.
I view capitalism in the same way. It will never truly completely cease to exist (the same way Digg never truly died), but it can become irrelevant over time if we collectively decide to just use another system to satisfy the same needs that capitalism is satisfying today.
The one example that I can think of that tries to tackle this problem is the idea of free stores that are based on a gift economy. If more people decided to use this system instead of capitalism then capitalism will have less sway over people’s lives.
And in the end it doesn’t have to be specifically a free store that needs to be adopted by wider society but whatever it is does need to satisfy the same basic need that capitalism does in our current society.
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most people are not capitalists and hold no capital now.
it sounds like you just want to ban big business. i like the idea of removing limited/collective liability. ceos/executives/boards need to risk more jail time for those big salaries and the terrible decisions they make. but also, you could tax the big guys into the ground and provide a ton of social services.
most people are not capitalists and hold no capital now.
Yeah most people aren’t but almost everyone has to participate in a capitalist system.
it sounds like you just want to ban big business.
No I want to use a system that isn’t capitalism.
i would like the stock market to not exist either. our odds are about the same
“Capitalism” just means that the industry (or specifically, “means of production”) can be privately owned.
The whole idea of Lemmy is allowing smaller groups / individuals to own smaller instances, so we don’t depend on big corporations.
So the way I understand it, it’s more of a big vs small thing, not really a “private” vs “governmental/social” ownership thing.
Sure, Lemmy gives freedom for people so, even governments, can make their own public instances… but this all still relies on capitalism, since individual instances can still owned by (smaller?) private groups that can compete amongst each other for users, so you basically are competing as if you were just another company in a capitalist system controlled by offer/demand and reliant on what the average consumer goes after.
This would be the equivalent of asking people to purchase ethically sourced goods and drive the market with their purchase decisions (which is actually what a capitalist system expects) as opposed to actually making laws that forbid companies from selling unethical products. That means we are not ignoring capitalism, but rather participating on it, and just asking consumers to choose ethically when they go buy a product. That’s just an attempt at ethical/educated capitalism, but still capitalism.
If you have $1, or pants, or the copyright to a comment, then you have capital.
Any kind of ownership, is capital.
This is essentially the premise of Walk Away by Cory Doctorow.
You DO need that thing that’s going to “satisfy the same basic need that capitalism does.”
Huh thx for the book suggestion.
Nah, the way to end Capitalism is to make people not want to participate in it. It holds too much power to ignore. But if you make participation in it more costly than not, people will choose to not participate.
Interesting take. Could you elaborate?
Wealth (at the level of being part of the “Owner” class of Capitalists) carries social implications and practical implications for people living with it. It’s difficult to live amongst people with whom you share a large wealth disparity, which is why wealthy people tend to move to wealthy communities, or even to countries with higher rates of wealth or wealth enclaves. There is already significant anti-billionaire sentiment amongst the general populace, and billionaires already tend to live in isolation from people of normal means, partially for practical considerations like safety, but also just due to social considerations (like not wanting the shame and embarrassment of having people call them out in public places for the harm they do, as we’ve seen people do with politicians, for example). That sentiment is growing, and extending further and further into the Capitalist owner class as a whole, even for non-billionaires.
The systems that the wealthy use to insulate themselves from people of normal means always rely on the labor of a subset of people, such as delivery services or chauffeurs or pilots or nannys or guards, etc, who are willing to provide services to the Capitalist class.
Boycotting providing services to the wealthy is one way to make it more “costly” for them. Calling them out when they do go places outside of their constructed enclaves is another. And more.
Once that “cost” rises above the threshold of their membership in the Capitalist class being more advantageous than not, people will stop aspiring and working towards it.
Boycotting is an expected/intended tool in capitalism. It’s part of the “free market” philosophy, the regulatory “invisible hand”. The reason you can boycott a company is because the economy is based on a capitalist free market.
If boycotts were actually a good and successful method for the society to regulate the wealthy, then there would be no issue with capitalism. So that’s not how you “end” capitalism, that’s just how you make it work.
The issue is, precisely, that boycotts do not work (and thus, capitalism does not really work). Particularly when entire industries are controlled by private de-facto monopolies. If they worked you would not need social-democratic laws to force companies into compliance in many ethical aspects.
What you are advocating is not an alternative to capitalism (like communism or socialism), but a more ethical/educated capitalism that works at controlling the wealthy, just like many proponents of capitalism expected it would.
You are talking about boycotting businesses. I am talking about boycotting individuals out of economic and social participation. Making them unable to exist as they do within a society, through fear of inconvenience, or social ostracization, or other things.
And yes, there is never going to be one magic silver bullet for billionaires. That’s why I listed that among other means to deal with them. As I said, it’s about making it too detrimental for them to choose to be that.
That’s even harder. Specially if we aspire to have a community that protects privacy & anonymity.
Keep in mind “rich” does not necessarily mean “famous”.
For all anyone knows, you and me could be part of the wealthy, yet nobody here would know, no online service would deny us service. Being forced to live an anonymous and private life is not really much of a punishment, at least it wouldn’t be for me… if I were part of that wealthy I’d just lay low… I’d get a reasonably humble but comfortable house in a reasonably neighborhood where people mind their own business, dressing modestly and living life without having to “really” work a day of my life, while my companies / assets / investments keep making money so I can go on modest trips and have some nice hobbies that are not necessarily really that expensive anyway. Anyone who figures it out, I set them up. It’d still be worth it to live that life.Wealth without any kind of external indicators is 1) not generally a problem, and 2) are not generally the actual wealthy who are causing harm.
Are there millionaires who live in a 500k house and drive a Mini? Sure. But they’re going to be on the low end of millionaires, not generally in the Capitalist class, just in the higher end of trades.
No one is out to deny people a comfortable house, modest vacations, and hobbies.
People are trying to solve for the kind of wealth that buys political power, or that can upend communities, or that has legislative sway.
Bezos cannot be anonymous, and still have the influence he does. Or Musk. Or even just the executives of publicly-traded companies. Anonymity is something that wealthy people have a hard time with.
The reason that most mid-level millionaires can be anonymous now, is because no one is intent on finding them all. It’s not hard to if you’re out to do it.
The best way, imo, is to put your cash money in people and businesses that support socialist ideals rather than capitalist ones. What you propose sounds like a utopian scenario, but until we can step out of paying money for things, we should do our best to keep it out of the hands of the bourgeois. And I want to emphasize that this includes the big banks that make money off of processing payments.
I want to emphasize that this includes the big banks that make money off of processing payments.
I very much agree with the rest of your comment but the processing of payments is not the most pressing issue of capitalism and there’s no practical alternative. (No, your central database stored in a P2P network does not count.)
Absolutely, I agree, but the banks hold a lot of power so it benefits us to keep as much capital out of their hands as possible. Do what you can, especially when it comes to dealing with other anti-capitalist entities - just use cash where you can. It’s not about tearing down the system right now, it’s about relocating resources and shifting power.
You might be interested in https://taler.net/en/index.html. Really cool tech that conserves most of the benefits of cash. The only feature of cash that it can probably never implement is transfer between two offline parties.
I personally think we are going to need to move to a hybrid capitalist situation before we can hope to move past it. It will be very hard for countries to make a switch away, as it will prevent them from really existing in the global market, or force the governments to hold all the cash so they can still partake.
I think the direction some places are taking with basic or universal income is one of the most promising steps away I’ve heard about recently. It allows for a sort of sudo communism within the bounds of a capitalist society by ensuring all have the same basic access to resources. Obviously there are plenty of caveats with the implementations so far, such as who gets it, how much is it, can it cover basic living, etc. But I think it represents what I’m getting at.
If we can continue to implement meaningful social programs such as free and accessible healthcare, basic incomes, shortened work weeks, minimum wages, etc, etc it is continued progress towards a world where money becomes increasingly meaningless as everyone has what they need and only need to work for the extras.
Just my two cents from someone with absolutely no background in the relevant fields :)
If you want to start a non capitalist company that’s a great idea and I’d urge you to go for it.
Last time I tried starting a non-capitalist company… they told me I didn’t yet have a big enough company to start a tax evasion one.
You wouldn’t need to worry about company tax rates if all the profit when to the employees as salary.
Yeah… somehow the people I spoke to didn’t figure that out. Then I had some first-hand experience at an employee-owned company, and… OMG, some people can be so smart and so stupid¹ at the same time, it’s baffling. It made me kind of reconsider.
(¹: as in “I want more than that guy over there… but no, none of us want anything to do with governance, let’s make CEO the first one who asks for it… [some years later] what do you mean they embezzled ALL the money? 🙀” 🤦)
You’re not the first person with this idea. I suggest you read up on gift economies so that it may inform your experiment if you go on to make one and wish you the best of luck.
I’m of the personal opinion that while radical Anarchist direct action like this is great, it’s not really something you can practice on a societal scale.
