7 ms·
A majority of millennial's don't really know what capitalism is.
by vegancap 10y ago
A majority of millennial's don't really know what capitalism is.
- gadders 10y agoAnd more importantly, they've never really seen how bad the alternatives are.
- qwenda 10y agoThey also do not know, what socialism is.
- atemerev 10y agoThere aren't many places in the world left where bona fide socialism now exists, thankfully. I can think only of Venezuela and North Korea.
- lqdc13 10y agoThere is also "capitalism" in Iraq, Syria, and Congo. There is "socialism" in Sweden and Finland. There is "socialism" in Belarus and "capitalism" in Ukraine. There is "socialism" in China and "capitalism" in Indonesia. None of these comparisons obviously make sense.
- atemerev 10y agoYou can own private property and run business in all these countries. I was born in USSR. Socialism there meant that private business ownership is definitely not allowed. As many other things, too. It was impossible to buy and sell real estate, for example.
- lqdc13 10y agoExactly. I was commenting on how those are not real examples of socialism - you can own property in Venezuela for example. North Korea is more of an example of a dictatorship than anything else.
- return0 10y agoTrying to sell the black/white view of capitalism/communism to millenials proves to be a hard sell. People travel, they see social democracies in europe and elsewhere and begin to doubt capitalism. I think american media is adapting very slowly to the underlying realities behind the rise of Bernie sanders.
- ptr 10y agoAre you talking about the social democracies of Northern Europe? They wouldn't be possible without capitalism.
- return0 10y agoThe article is about rejecting capitalism, not about rejecting free markets. Regarding europe at large, including france and even UK to some extent, the difference between american style capitalism and social democracy is whether the Capitalists or the Democracy have primacy in the society. It's not about choosing exclusively one of the two.
- ptr 10y agoThe capital gains tax is lower than the taxes on employment. Wouldn't this mean that owning is favored by the society?
- bad_user 10y agoWho is this capitalism you're speaking of? I want to meet him.
- ethanbond 10y agoNor without socialism. There are no millennials advocating USSR style communism. They're advocating a move away from unbridled '00s capitalism.
- jazzyk 10y agoWhat "unbridled '00 capitalism"? More like statist, crony-capitalism intertwined with kleptocracy.
- VMG 10y agoPeople who defend it usually don't.
- lernerslaw 10y agoSocialism is a stateless utopia Communism is Full State capitalism Most of the world have a State sponsored Capitalism system.
- lqdc13 10y agoPretty sure it's the other way around. Communist society is the ideal state that has never been achieved. This is the ultimate goal of socialism.
- lernerslaw 10y agoThere's always gonna be endless debate about terms... Let's just say that what I call communism is what happened in Russia. And that it was supposed to be an intermediary step toward socialism. The idea was State owned means of production ==> totally democratic ownership everyone is free no need for a state bliss
- parenthephobia 10y agoAnd this is why people "don't know what capitalism is" and "don't know what communism is". Different people take the words to mean something different. For a lot of people, "communism" is little more than a synonym for "authoritarian kleptocracy". --- As the phrases are actually used in Leninist theory, the goal was stateless communism. Socialism was an intermediary stage between capitalism and communism accurately described by Lenin, who invented the concept, as "state capitalism". A "dictatorship of the proletariat" would take over capitalism's economic and political infrastructure and support the citizenry until a transition to true communism was possible. To the surprise of nobody who owned a history book, it turned out the dictatorship came to be corrupted by a ruler with no real interest in communism, but plenty of interest in being a dictator. It's worth noting that Marx didn't advocate any particular method of transitioning from capitalism to communism, because Marx wasn't, precisely, a revolutionary. He regarded the transition as simply an inevitable consequence of capitalism's failings.
- atemerev 10y agoWell, if Nobel Prize laureates in economics don't know what capitalism is, what can be expected from mere millennials?
- curiousgal 10y agoCare to elaborate?
- atemerev 10y agoPaul Krugman defending broken window fallacy as the most blatant example.
- trevelyan 10y agolink? I find this hard to believe.
- atemerev 10y agohttp://business.time.com/2011/08/16/paul-krugman-an-alien-invasion-could-fix-the-economy/ http://business.time.com/2011/08/16/paul-krugman-an-alien-in... https://mises.org/library/broken-window-fallacy https://mises.org/library/broken-window-fallacy
- trevelyan 10y agoYou don't seem to understand Krugman, or perhaps it is the broken window fallacy itself. Krugman is not advocating redirecting spending from one use to another (i.e. buying glass instead of buying bread). Krugman is advocating increasing budget deficits and printing more money to increase aggregate demand. There is a very obvious increase in the amount of money in circulation in the economy in this case.
- atemerev 10y agoDo you know how "printing money" works in the US? And why it doesn't create much inflation? It is impossible to create new money for additional spending from thin air; but it seems that it is possible to bring them from future, specifically, from future taxes (since the government doesn't produce much).