this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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The problem is that the biggest "winners" in this case are almost exclusively the people willing to go the furthest to put profits ahead of people, which in a better system would never be incentivized.
Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all others which have been tried
"I went to high school. Hear my wisdom"
If you disagree, feel free to point to a superior alternative which has been demonstrated in reality
Socialism
As demonstrated by which socialist country
You got asked to name a successful economic system, and you chose feudalism? Holy shit man i’d love to hear the argument to back this up
Its slavery with extra steps. No upward mobility at all. Ask the Irish what caused their famous potato famine.
Feudalism didn't lift nearly as many people out of poverty compared to Capitalism.
Not trying to be antagonistic, but the only number I know from that era is the 10,000,000 civilians who died during the Bolshevik Revolution.
And I gotta admit, that's not making me look forward to your revolution...
That leads to a beauty of capitalism though. People prioritize profit, yes, but with competition, the way to make a profit is to be appealing to people. You make a profit by providing the best good or service at the best price. This means that the people who have the goal of profits also have the goal of pleasing their customers.
There's a quote from somewhere that goes something like this "capitalism takes the most ambitious, selfish, and capable people and forces them to stay up at night thinking about what everyone else wants".
We have seem over and over again that companies will eventually become greedy and will kill all competition. One example Standard Oil , they will eventually not serve the customers as you mentioned. The customers will have to pay really high prices for lower quality service or product. I am not a lot into socialism because we come back to the same that one entity is controlling everything and we have seem also that the government sucks. So maybe a hybrid approach will be nice to try.
Insulin prices in the US is a great example of this. It's not about being competitive, it's about charging the absolute highest amount they can possibly get away with.
Yes that's a great example! Capitalism is great in paper it improves quality of life and the free market make companies more competitive but big corporations abuse this and create monopolies.
Insulin prices would be a lot lower if more people were allowed to produce and sell it.
It's not a question of not being allowed to produce it, it's anti-competitive practices by the pharmaceuticals industry, which capitalism rewards.
Source
Source
Save for pay for delay, all of those rely on patents and copy-rights, which are government intervention.
According to the first source, it also looks like competitors are entering and offering lower prices, including open source methods (though I have no idea how that really works). One of the biggest problems for all of them is the government saying "no, you can't do this or that for whatever reason". Sometimes it's good for the government to intercede, but it seems like in this case it's helping perpetuate monopolies.
Monopolies are pretty dangerous, and I'd like to avoid then as much as possible.
I think that they're generally created and sustained by government intervention though. Bailouts, legal fees, red tape, price controls, exceedingly long copyrights, they all hurt new competitors more than established ones.
If one company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks then I'm going to buy someone else's bread and that company loses a lot of money.
If every company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks, that's an extraordinary opportunity for a new competitor to come in with reasonable prices.
One valid use of government power is punishing people who murder, and I'm not exactly sure what power cartels have outside of that.
I googled it and the Wikipedia page said they're inherently unstable, but I don't know how reliable that is.
In any case, I don't see how my second example isn't a cartel itself. All the bread companies are colluding to set the price of bread artificially high. The problem is there isn't much to stop new competitors (or to stop members defecting).
You should read Lenin's "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism", you're like 2 steps from it, just in this moment you try to turn back the clock instead of looking forward.
"I studied economics in high school. Hear my wisdom."
What about monopolies?