• Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
    20·
    11 hours ago

    In all fairness, the concept of owning things isn’t unique to capitalism - it’s Personal property vs. “Private” property. Whether it’s money or bartering, the things you bought you own via your own hard work, and that’s your personal property.

    Private property shouldn’t be a thing. A corporation shouldn’t own anything - there should always be a person on that contract that can be held to account. If you want to profit from your enterprise, you should be prepared to go down with it.

    • StinkySocialistEnglish
      4·
      6 hours ago

      I’m sorry I need to define the difference differently. My mental illness won’t let me not lol. Too afraid people won’t get it.

      Personal property: your house, your car, your clothes , your tooth brush, even your commercial grade bbq truck you use for fun.

      “Private property”: the means of production, working money, factory, stocks, business infrastructure. Statistically speaking scraps of stocks are the only private property anyone reading this owns.

      The profits that come from “having your money work for you” are really just taking surplus value from someone else’s labor.

      • BatrickPateman@lemmy.world
        5·
        3 hours ago

        People were able to buy stuff in communist countries like GDR and other soviet republics (well, shortages of goods aside of course lol). So those were capitalist in a way then?

        Stalin et all. turning in their grave intensifies

        Jokes aside:

        Key points defining capitalism are the pursuit of profit and that the means of production are in private hands. Buying stuff is a “feature” of many systems besides capitalistic ones.

        Edit: fixed autocowrecktion

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      8·
      10 hours ago

      “Good question, good question! The answer: Propaganda! Good old fashioned propaganda. We keep the larger class splintered into smaller groups that fight each other and we sit back and laugh all the way to the bank!”

  • Uiop@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    2·
    9 hours ago

    Interestingly Adam Smith mellowed out in his later years and got even to a somewhat “leftist” view of the world and wrote against his early works with the “invisible hand of the market”.

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
    82·
    12 hours ago

    preface edit: well played, i am agitated! the comic does catch the flippant mood well.
    i’m just butthurt that it won’t help me win any arguments against capitalism.

    capitalism sucks but this straw man argument is dumb.

    the fact that you own things that i cannot have and that i am discouraged from taking the things you own away from you by force is a GOOD thing, actually.

    and paper is not what intrinsically embodies ownership; you own all kinds of shit that was not conveyed to your possession via a piece of paper. If you exerted effort to gather objects and alter them to create something, it is your WORK that made it yours.

    look, let me meet you half-way:

    There are MANY problems with capitalism, but here’s the one I want to attack in particular:

    A capitalist doesn’t even REALLY own any of the things they claim they do because they do not DO hardly any of the work themselves and they are not held RESPONSIBLE for the CONSEQUENCES when the stuff they falsely claimed to own inflicts harm.

    If a capitalist claims to own a factory and that factory kills someone, that capitalist doesn’t go to jail.

    If I own a GUN and that GUN kills someone, even if I didn’t personally pull the trigger, I AM VERY MUCH GOING TO JAIL.

    A factory is “owned” by something that ISN’T EVEN A PERSON.

    PRIVATE PROPERTY is not owned by a PERSON.

    PERSONAL PROPERTY is what is owned by a PERSON.

    The literally inhuman, distinctly non-person THING which owns PRIVATE property is an abstract financial instrument called a “corporation”. If the factory goes into debt, the capitalist is not ruined financially; their corporation goes bankrupt and they get to walk away with zero fucking consequences and that’s fucking bullshit and it needs to DIE.

    When a business or the machinery contained therein kills someone, anyone who claims to be the “owner” needs to be charged as a criminal for failing to secure their weapon.

    Otherwise, if I construct a dwelling, nobody has the right to barge into my personal home. Even if they’re larger than me and could feasibly kill me and take it by force. I would much rather enter into an agreement with someone so that in exchange for providing them with shelter they can help me expand it so that we, together, can provide shelter for MORE people.

    A society that cannot comprehend cooperative effort will never make it to space like the aliens in this comic.