Saying capitalism isn't the problem but monopolies are is like saying a cancerous tumor isn't the problem, but the aggressive metastasis is.

"Capitalism isn't the problem, THIS is"

* points to the main thing capitalism does *

Capitalism is still the problem. This is a aymptom of that problem

Ummm...except that this IS capitalism. It's just completely unregulated capitalism...which is capitalism in its truest form. If "the free market" was given complete autonomy to regulate itself...monopolies are always the inevitable outcome.

and WHAT is the Problem? Have you considered how it relates back to Capitalism, how money equals power and money can proliferate on its own by using your power?

No.

Capitalism IS the problem.

"capitalism is not the problem. The problem is capital and it accumulation."

Yeah. Great propaganda bro.

You're complaining about accumulation of power/wealth and how it ends up being abused by the powerful/wealthy. That's one of the main features of unregulated capitalism

Lol, you're pointing to a time when regulation was still helping keep shit up, completely discounting the fact that we had these same issues before the regulations were in place. We had these kinds of monopolies before (Ma Bell, Standard oil, etc), there was just a handful of decades where the government was trying to keep them from going full capitalism, which they're now able to do.

Capitalism is the problem, you just don't see the problem because you've seen what it's like when governments reign in corporations. But without something keeping a boot on the neck of the corpos, this is what we get

Op... I don't feel like I want to say the same thing as others but you realize capitalism causes monopolies .?

And as a 2nd point Ive not seen mentioned because it's slightly off topic but.

Capitalism encourages unsustainability.

By it's very nature there is no end goal but growth for the sake of growth.

This can't happen forever. You understand that right?

We live on a planet with finite resources. And a breaking point for pollution that many believe has already been met.

Capitalism WILL kill this entire planet and everyone on it.

It's not a theory or a prediction.

It's absolute. Again, by its very nature, the goals of capitalism is to cut corners to keep producing. To constantly expand. To reduce production costs constantly. (Usually in the form of labor).

Which is not sustainable.

This is why billionaires want more babies. To feed the capitalism machine.

But what we really should be doing is celebrating lower birth rates. We don't need more humans to be slaves.

We need less humans. And sustainable economies. Sustainable lifestyles.

Machines have reduced the need for human labor a hundred fold. And increased human production by quite a lot. Yet humans are still paid low wages.

Capitalism will continue to exploit human labor.

The more of us there are, the lower value we have.

You ever have a job where they make it clear how replaceable you are? I have. And there are a lot of jobs like that.

True communism is the only system that will save us. Not Russia fake communism. Not China authoritarian fake communism.

I mean legit actual real communism. Where the workers own the companies. Not billionaires.
Why do people believe those men deserve to hoard?

I don't get it. Just watch videos of those losers. They aren't great men. They don't deserve to hoard the wealth. They are rich from harming others. Exploiting. Funding wars and politicians in other countries and our own that allow them to keep exploiting.
Literally. Not figuratively. We have allowed the worst of humanity to take control.

This has to stop.

True communism or something like it, is the only sustainable system that will save humanity and the planet.

But that is the inevitable outcome of capitalism.
It's like saying "the problem isn't kittens, it's cats".

Everything in the post screams unfettered, unregulated capitalism as the underlying cause since it's the system that allows and promotes this behavior.

Also as a 40+ year old, I can remember that this has been the case too since I remember the wal-marts moving in and killing every local business with everyone smiling about cheap Chinese goods. Same as it ever was.

The fundamental argument here is that it's not the system which incentivizes abusers that is the problem but rather the abusers who exploit the system. Sure, we can have another working class revolution, keep capitalism around and build institutions that keep exploitation in check but given enough time those with capital and the power that it represents will chip away at those institutions, continuing the cycle and harming people in the process.

Economics, as an intellectual discipline, is closer to theology than physics. Much like religion being arbitrary rules cherry picked from schizophrenic Bronze Age fan fiction, current economic models are built as narratives manufactured to justify the existence, position, and legitimacy of a ruling class. Finance is merely mythology shrouded in enough mathematic formulas to provide the appearance of a natural, universal legitimacy.

Capitalism is absolutely the problem, but I don’t consider replacing it with something else, or eliminating it to be a viable response. My biggest problem with capitalism, and all economic systems, is the lack of consent. Capitalism should be tolerated only when conducted by those who have actively chosen to be exposed to it. Let them play in an air tight bubble where they have to recycle their competitively manufactured farts.

There's a paradox I heard of that's pretty relevant in this line of thought that is pretty transportable to most things. I heard it in the context of IT security.

It goes something like this: you buy security and after 2 or 3 years when you need to renew, nothing bad has happened, so it seems like you don't need security. When in actual fact the extra security has been the reason there haven't been any incidents.

So it's almost impossible to prove that buying the security is helping without extensive analytics.

In many cases those analytics are either very difficult or impossible to get.

To demonstrate the transportable nature of this concept, let's transpose it to vaccines.

If everyone is vaccinated, then nobody gets sick from those diseases, making it seem like the diseases are not a threat anymore, which means that vaccines are no longer useful.

Meanwhile, in all actual fact, the only reason why polio is so rare is because there is a safe and effective vaccine for it that everyone has taken (replace polio with whatever disease you want that has an effective vaccine).

It's a paradox of: how do we prove this is working, without discontinuing it and possibly being eaten by rats/leopards/whatever.

If there's only monopolies in the market then is their product the best on the market, or is everyone using it because there's no alternatives?

Leaning that monopoly argument against capitalism, it's almost certainly not the best product. When you have a captive audience, those that need your service and don't have an alternative, there's no incentive to innovate, or invest in improving the product at all. Do innovation stagnates so that corporations can maximize shareholder value; because the focus of a corporation isn't to innovate, or improve what they do, their focus is always on extracting the most value for the least cost.

Therefore, monopolies will almost certainly lead to a sub-optimal product. The people that suffer for this are the users of that product. In the case of something like Google search, that's basically everyone.

There's a more modern term for this phenomenon: enshittification. Actively making a product worse specifically for the purposes of creating profits for shareholders.

Late stage capitalism is fun, isn't it?

Small local businesses fuck over their employees too. Capitalism incentives it. It also incentives monopolies. And it seems when the wealth disparity gets large enough, it captures government and starts transforming into fascism.

Every example you give is driven by capitalism.

Competition, especially free market competition is one of the enemies of capitalism.

Fortunately for capitalists in a liberalised (unregulated) market it's not too hard to build up market power somewhere in the supply chain, and squeeze out, or effectively force the competition into franchise.

Almost unavoidable economies of scale in industries like banking are huge problem, that concentrates critical market power and drives out competition under the guise of plausible investor friendly sounding shit like "risk premia", "international competitiveness", "labour cost efficiency". Directed credit, sectoral and regional should be part of being a bank, the banks have been given responsibility for running the economy, but not made accountable for it. That's why they can get away with investing in real estate bubbles instead of productive industry.

FDR was one of the last USA leaders who seemed to understand the role of banks - sadly that was a long time ago and those ideas seem to be long forgotten.

You're just describing capitalist inevitabilities

If the goal is to make a profit for private owners, you are going to get this shit eventually. Regulating the fuck out of it might make it feel better but only in comparison.

We could regulate a system where the workers own the means of production too.

But we should be making things that last forever, protect our planet, etc. Profit is antithetical to sustaining life so, advocating for that sounds insane.

Thanks Chicago School of Economics you neoliberal bastards, "monopolies are efficient" my ass.

Uncharacteristically self-aware of you to post this in the shitpost community.

The real problem is people. It doesn't matter which system you live under greedy shitty people will find every loophole they can to increase their own wealth especially if the consequences aren't seen or felt. It's not being evil it's just how people are.

Generally agreed. Unregulated Capitalism is the real issue here, we used to have, like... within the lifetime of people we know, very regulated capitalism and a market that really worked for us, the average person was rapidly getting richer and we had real quality of life.

That said, a part of me admittedly thinks this may be inevitable though, because once capitalism is unregulated briefly, all hell breaks loose. Once any company has a monopoly and true market dominance, the only way to continue making line go up is to change the rules of the game by lobbying, and once money enters your government and corrupts its ability to regulate, the train never stops.

I suspect it keeps getting worse until things go violently wrong and the system resets. But even then, I think we as a society forget, and "try" deregulating capitalism again in a few hundred years, kicking off another cycle that ends in revolution.

this is why I subscribe to NOTHING and I buy NOTHING except for shit to literally keep me alive, or to repair things I already own.

never been more physically fit, have tons of new skills from guitar to fixing my appliances.

Neoliberals didn’t do this solo.

“If only we keep the endless greed machine leashed then surely it won’t bite us, now let’s get it some more chewable collar cause that’s what it asked for”.

Is that Cory Doctorow?

Seeing the real harm it causes, maybe instead we should be strictly regulating economic degrees as strictly as ABET regulates engineering degrees

The real problems is problems.

Monopolies are bad in every sector with the exception of software development. Let me explain:

When you produce 5 cars, you have 5 cars. That's 5 times as good as 1 car. So it makes sense to produce more cars.

When you have 5 programs (that each do the same), you have effectively 4 redundancies and you could get the same work done with 1 program. So, 5 programs is worth just as much as 1 program, and the other 4 are a waste. So it is more efficient to only write every software once. This also reduces bloat and confusion. For example, if iOS and Android had more common code basis, it would probably be better for everyone.

Consider this meme, but with products instead of standards:

This is why monopolies make sense in software development. Google developed a lot of software, including Android, which doesn't need to be developed 10x times by 10 different companies. It only needs to be developed once. That's the difference between hardware (cars) and software.

Both Capitalism and Monopolies are the problem

Wrong community.

He lost me at vitamin.

I want to say while the printer ink stuff has been true for the longest time, there are printers out there which allow you to refill liquids directly. Manufacturers are Brother, Canon, Epson and HP. I have one set of these bottles and I sawed the back off so I use them as a funnel to make the liquid go into the printer.

Competitive human nature and tribalism are the problem.

If something that gives a competitive advantage can be done, someone will do it regardless of the negative consequences (often inflicted upon others).

Its a failure of government and a failure of culture not a result of the economic system.