@PinkWug anti-capitalists: there's more of us than them we can overturn the system if we work together
also anti-capitalists: boohoo my personal market power is so much smaller than a super rich person's in the top 0.1% of the population
I thought the WSB saga would at least work as a proof of concept but apparently no, they just like to feel powerless and miserable.
@moffintosh @PinkWug it was still proof that the common people have more power working together than any of the scary evil rich entities. We can control the market, we can shape it however we want, we are a key cog in the machine without the cooperation of which none of the "rich elites" can do crap. The problem is that it requires cooperation and we're generally awful at cooperation. This means a truly free market capitalism doesn't work well and needs at least some regulation, but it also means that all non-market-based systems that are based purely on altruistic cooperation instead of competition and cooperation can be thrown right into the trash where they belong.
@Amikke @moffintosh @PinkWug
Real free markets will never exist especially since the last time we even had something close to a proper "free market" it had led to so many health violations and child labor that the government had to enforce some restrictions. Imagine a free market in the modern day with Amazon.
@ashiisbest @Amikke @PinkWug And child labour is already getting back, lol
@moffintosh @ashiisbest @PinkWug exactly for that reason, free market theorists suggested that the people could control it using boycott but failed to account for the fact that people can't cooperate altruistically when it's inconvenient for them and except for really extreme cases boycott just doesn't work. It's a fun case because it's theoretically fully possible but realistically impossible and shows that both "truly free" market and non market based economies fail for the same reason; it's especially fun to see anarcho-capitalists and all manner of socialists and communists argue using the exact same "they actually can cooperate altruistically but we haven't tried well enough yet" argument.
As for the child labor, the US manages to combine the flaws of free market with the flaws of authoritarian bureaucracy and is not a good role model for nearly anything.
@Amikke @ashiisbest @PinkWug
Incorrect. The issue at hand here is that there is no coordination apparatus to manage strikes and an "altruistic" non-market economy. The issue can be (and has been) resolved via the repurposing of the state, local administration and worker unions to manage and plan the economy
@moffintosh @ashiisbest @PinkWug oh yeah, that always goes well, effectively replacing a "lord" that has to at least stay competitive to a "lord" who's a high level politician residing over a complete monopoly. There's a joke from the bad old days of communism in Poland, "lud pije szampana ustami swoich przedstawicieli!", meaning "the people are drinking champagne via the lips of their representatives". Or another one "za czasów kapitalizmu był wyzysk człowieka przez człowieka, a teraz jest dokładnie odwrotnie" meaning "in the times of capitalism it was man exploiting man, but now it's the exact opposite".
Thinking that politicians will be somehow better than capitalists is naive and always ends the same way.
@moffintosh @ashiisbest @PinkWug by the way, these jokes might not seem that funny. They were then, the sheer ridiculousness and hopelessness of the situation resulted in a lot of gallows humour.