Just look at all the shit on Amazon to know that capitalism puts out a bunch of garbage all that stuff is a waste of resources.

Suffering as a means of production is the heart of capitalism

We’re beyond that. Capitalism is a disease.

Any form of capitalism that permits the accumulation of wealth will lead to deregulation and economic collapses with increasing frequency.

Colonialism was pursued under the economic theory of mercantilism and capitalist thinkers explicitly separated their ideas from it (among other things by emphasis on the idea that the best kind of wealth is tools instead of gold and as a result the pursuit of wealth can be cooperative instead of zero sum game), but otherwise sure it all looks the same in the end. It’s not like capitalists ever stopped and said “No, don’t invade that country for its natural resources, that goes against our principles of making more money.”

Fucking well put!

Except “dismal science” wasn’t meant as a critique.

Some might even call it ancap. Proto-fascism.

The best bureaucrat we have is Lina Khan and all the wealthy donors on both sides want her gone.

This is news to me! You got a link to a credible source? I’d love to read it so I can hopefully change my opinion some.

EDIT>> Found it on my own, and it’s the FTC, not the FCC. And this was posted one day ago, so I would think I could be forgiven for that :) (Seems it’s been in the works since March, at least) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/grocery-cost-inflation-investigation-b2594782.html

In an unregulated market

There’s no such thing. All markets are regulated. Even ones dominated by cartels. Markets do not meaningfully exist without regulation. The only question is how they’re regulated.

“Free market” ideology is based on nonsense, they’ve proven this over and over.

The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.

Those conditions of course don’t exist in the real world, best we can do is to regulate away market failures to approach the theoretical ideal. That’s the kind of thing ordoliberalism argues for, and it can indeed work very well in practice. Random example: You want companies to use packaging with less environmental impact. You could have a packaging ministry that decides which company uses what packaging for what, creating tons of state bureaucracy – or you could say “producers, you’re now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself”. What previously was an externality for those companies suddenly appears on their balance sheet and they self-regulate to use way more cardboard, easily recyclable plastics, whatnot.

In a free market, aren’t you free to collude with your competitors in order to fix prices?

Many businesses in the US still cling to that trope, yes. We all understood that it was to a be a temporary issue in 2020 and 2021, but businesses took that to mean they could just never drop their prices now that people were willing, at the time, to pay for it. I’m not talking luxury goods either, I’m talking about staples to maintain life, such as meat, vegetables, and even water prices have risen. This is untenable for many, many people.

That joke was good, but it’s old now. Everyone should understand that it was due to the peak of oil/gas prices due to the Ukraine war, that had cascade effects on the price of transportation, fertilizer, energy, groceries…which then compounded into general inflation with some price gouging too to keep it from going back as quickly.

If you want to keep that from happening again, gradually reduce your dependence on fossil fuels for your security, not just to “be green”.

Research about human history and you will know what I’m talking about, the same phenomenon it’s seen in all the human history, it is just now it’s at global scale but it will be the same when humans get into the space, far-left and far-right will keep fighting each other for resources and power.

Edit: There is no transcendence until you are a cold dead ass, until then you will need to pick a side, if you are smart enough you will pick the side of the winners.

China is way ahead on this kind of automation.

Okay but how does AI/Automation/etc. cause a mass murder if the preoccupying assumption of automation is, quite literally, increase of technological efficiency and advancement?

That’s called autophagy, not keto.

Max Weber would argue different.

Man has been around for thousands of years athis current sociointelligent level. It is not hard to extrapolate the current fascist mentalities back through the ages all the way through our barbarous past.

capitalism superceded mercantilism about 2 centuries ago. it’s nowhere near as old as currency

What you’re saying is at best debatable, and it’s definitely not consensus in academia. Feudalism is substantially and fundamentally different from capitalism. Serfs worked the land not based on free contracts for a wage selling their labour as a commodity, but rather legally bound to their lord’s land. Access to consumer goods wasn’t through purchase as commodities in a free market, but through self-production and barter/debt within small communities. Peasants worked the land with their own means of production and made their own tools with their own means of production, and generally people weren’t hired working other people’s means of production.

Class struggle has existed for millennia, but capitalism is just the current predominant system of class struggle because through industrial development it overpowers preexisting systems that weren’t capitalist.

Eh, you’re both wrong. Fascism is an invention of the 20th century and capitalism is mostly an invention of the 19th century (although The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776). Both ideologies have very deep roots that you’re conflating with their dominant modern expressions. Capitalism is specific ideology built around market economics, but markets alone are not capitalism. Likewise fascism is a specific authoritarian ideology, but authoritarianism is not in itself fascism.

Pretty much sums up the UK since 2010.

good aesthetics and good vibes ≠ good intentions

and its the vibes that liberals really care about. its the obsession with feelings and aesthetics over truth. which is also why it’s such fertile soil for fascism to grow in. scratch a liberal, break the good vibes, snap them out of it, make them look at a homeless person, and they go fasch real quick. they certainly do a lot of shit fascists would approve of, they just kick some sand over it after. for example: the homeless purges about to sweep through california were ordered by a liberal, with the broad approval of liberals.

the concentration camps for migrants were built as much under liberals and fascists. as long as they dont have to see it, any amount of horror is fine. if it helps them not see suffering, any amount of horror is encouraged. they’re nice, they’re pleasant, but they are not friends, and the assumption that we’re natural allies, that they can behave as badly as they want and still count on left support is how american politics got as fucked as they are.

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The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.

Socialists seem rather illiberal about the definition and allowed use of the word and concept of liberal. They hear “a liberal?” and think “a fascist!”. I suspect that this greatly plays into the polarization between tankies and limbrols here on lemmy.

For example a newer definition of fascism is 1. belief in inequality based on 2. a mythological identity (e.g. race which isn’t real). That is useful to talk about trumpism vs the neoliberal democrats. But socialists completely refute that and insist it’s both the same fascism because capitalism. And that is where any discussion ends in my experience. It’s like we’re dividing and conquering ourselves for the benefit of the fascists…

Of course they are right in terms of foreign policy, which is absolutely fascist towards “shithole countries” no matter who rules in the white house. Neoliberalism is: 1. belief in inequality based on 2. economic or class status 3. personal freedom to die in whatever way seems best to you.

And once the prosperity is distributed away with rising wealth inequality that does lead to plutocracy and then fascism. And I suspect the socialists are right that without an explicit socialist component in your ideology this outcome is inevitable.

But unfortunately their definitions are stuck based on outdated theories written before 1950.

In order, but not quoting because mobile app and lazy:

Yes.

I said some.

They were both liberal, in that they were both proponents of liberalism, as in “liberal democracy.” Not liberalism as left of center. Liberalism as in market economies and private property.

I’m also not necessarily associating liberalism as a whole to fascism. All zits are zots, but not all zots are zits, you dig? Fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism and capitalism, but it doesn’t mean liberalism is fascistic or that it is inevitable. It means that when liberalism is threatened, in decline, backed into a corner by its own contradictions, fascism is one way that it defends itself so that the status quo can be maintained. It just depends on which part of the status society/the ruling class/those in charge value more. The personal freedom bit, the private property bit, the lifestyle of the rich bit? Social democracy is another way that liberalism defends itself, favored by those who value the other end of the spectrum. Fascism is a reaction to growing tensions around those contradictions and growing support for things like social democracy and actual socialism.

Also, this article specifically cites neo liberalism, an ideology of its own, and an outgrowth of liberalism, but liberalism itself. The shittiest form liberalism takes without going full fash IMHO, but it’s hard to define “shitty” in any sort of academic sense. But fuck Reagan and Thatcher.

The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.

What specifically got called out was neoliberalism. While ordoliberalism was briefly called neoliberalism the general understanding of the term is “Whatever nefarious shit the Atlas network is currently up to”. Things like conflating the free market with unregulated markets (which are anything but free), trickle-down economics, ludicrously excessive rent seeking behaviour, like say privatised pension funds, publishing ratings calling countries “nanny states” for having warnings on cigarettes because yes the tobacco lobby is very much part of that ilk, really the list is pretty endless: It’s pure class war. War creates victims, those victims need handling, and misdirection of ire is a very convenient strategy, “It’s not the billionaires who own everything who are at fault that you can’t make rent, it’s the immigrants”.

It’s not just Marx who is rotating in his grave, Adam Smith is very much spinning with at least the same RPM. It’s after all his own work which gets abused by those people.

As to the more sensible liberalisms – they largely got captured. The EU has a strong ordoliberal bent actually regulating markets ((it’s in fact constitutionally a social market economy), but that neolib shit is still eating away at it and many people, even policy makers, can’t really tell the difference.

Fascist regimes generally came into existence in times of crisis, when economic elites, landowners and business owners feared that a revolution or uprising was imminent. Fascists allied themselves with the economic elites, promising to protect their social status and to suppress any potential socialist revolution.. Then Fascists allied themselves with the economic elites, promising to protect their social status and to suppress any potential socialist revolution. There’s more specifics here if you want them.