4 ms·

I have come to the same conclusion, but let me ask you, how can you still be a capitalist having had that insight? Why would you support a system that you reco

by vrganj 2mo ago

I have come to the same conclusion, but let me ask you, how can you still be a capitalist having had that insight? Why would you support a system that you recognize makes it impossible to do the right thing even as we're dying from its consequences?

vixen99 2mo ago
You're not going to do anything at all without money as a fungible exchange mechanism (a sometime measure of 'value'). Capitalists see value in things and try to generate that value. Yes, politicians and the rest of us have the job of regulating that process and sometime fail to do a good job. Do you know the right thing to do? I doubt it. You seriously do not see this as an immensely complicated issue? Finally please give chapter and verse for the 'dying'. Maybe compare the world of 2026 with that of 1900 and the quality of life for people in general and our concern for the life on this planet. Concern isn't action but it's a necessary prerequisite for it.
- vrganj 2mo ago
  > Capitalists see value in things and try to generate that value Value for who? Value as determined by who? > Finally please give chapter and verse for the 'dying'. You're commenting on it right now. Rivers here are drying out. Glaciers are melting. Forests are burning. How long do you think we can keep going like this? > Maybe compare the world of 2026 with that of 1900 and the quality of life for people in general and our concern for the life on this planet. You can compare the results of those 126 years right here: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/01/23/learning/GlobalTempGraphLN/GlobalTempGraphLN-superJumbo.png https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/01/23/learning/GlobalTe... Regarding your quality of life claim, let me refer back to the burning forests, drying rivers etc. Would you call that an improvement? Clearly, its not going great. And action is actively being sabotaged by the most capitalist major power: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/climate/trump-climate-international-bullying.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/climate/trump-climate-int... So how do we proceed with all this in mind? How long can we keep optimizing for capital self-reproduction at the expense of the base conditions we survive on? The incentive structure does not allow for making the systemic changes required for continued thriving of humanity. What good is it then? How is it anything but a suicide pact?
  - nec4b 2mo ago
    >>Value for who? Value as determined by who? Value for us, real people who have needs. We decide what we want to buy and not some apparatchik on their pedestal. >>Rivers here are drying out. Glaciers are melting. Forests are burning. As if this never happened before capitalism?
    - vrganj 2mo ago
      Who is "us"? Because in capitalism, only people with capital get to decide what has value. The values of the poor are not reflected. The values of the indigenous are not reflected. The values of the non-capitalist are not reflected. The value of the unborn is not reflected. The value of nature is not reflected. The glacier doesn't participate in the market and neither does the river. Are they without value? > As if this never happened before capitalism? That's correct. Look at the graph I posted above, you'll notice that things weren't always this hot. Before capitalism they sure weren't.
      - nec4b 2mo ago
        No, every one participates. Ordinary people the most, because the capitalist first and foremost need to provide value to us. I'm not sure what do you mean by rivers, glaciers or others not participating in the market? Isn't it evident people assign great value to natural resources. The world is a bit older then 120 years in your graph. There were a lot of natural disasters that wiped quite a lot of living beings from the planet.
        vrganj 2mo ago
        > No, every one participates. Ordinary people the most That is just straight up not true. The tribal elder in the Amazon, who's forest capitalists are burning down never got asked how he defines value. The child not yet born was never asked if it's atmosphere should be heated up for data centers. Neither was the fish in the river or the river itself for that matter. > what do you mean by rivers, glaciers or others not participating in the market? I'm not sure what's unclear. The glacier melts as a result of somebody who's not the glacier deciding "value" on a market. In reality, the market doesn't decide value. Value is not price. The market decides power structures and violence distribution. The glacier has a value completely separate from the market, and not derived from it. > There were a lot of natural disasters Why are we pivoting to natural disasters now?
- dgellow 2mo ago
  Money and value exist in all economical systems and has existed in some form since immemorial times, that has literally nothing to do with capitalism, an ideology developed over the past 250y or so
  - xfil 2mo ago
    Also, our current system grossly undermines the functionality of our market economy. A lack of pricing for negative externalities will essentially always result in the basic concept of market failure. Run inaccurate pricing of carbon emissions long enough and something bad is bound to happen. Same ordeal with cattle ranching & agriculture to feed it in the Amazon basin: >20% of the 55-million-year-old Amazon rainforest has been degraded for cattle in the past 55 years, partially because consumers don't pay accurate prices and producers don't pay accurate costs. The unwillingness to merely partially solve obvious market failures via accurate pricing is a catastrophic hypocrisy in those among us who thump their chests about 'free markets' while conflating the concept with modern capitalism.
dgellow 2mo ago
I honestly don’t know and feel very conflicted about my own ideology. I recognize how broken it is at scale, but also value the personal autonomy, entrepreneurship, nonconformity capitalism promotes. Though my version of capitalism isn’t the libertarian free market one, libertarianism will always evolve into oligarchy or something fascistic given enough time, it’s just baked into the incentives. My personal ideology aligns with a managed capitalism, markets are created by an authority that ensures the incentives aligns with its overall goals. Mixed with very liberal social values. I don’t know if that can survive overtime though. And that would very likely degenerate into something else when under stress. As I said, I feel conflicted. But I appreciate the question
- hliyan 2mo ago
  Perhaps this will help: commerce, free market and capitalism are three different things. Commerce, or trade, has existed for millennia, even among tribes and villages. The free market emerges when there are multiple producers of a good or service, and there is no compulsion upon any producer (from either a third party or another producer) to buy or sell. Capitalism would be when one or more of these producers no longer need to engage in production themselves, but are able to use their surplus savings to employ other producers and then keep for themselves the difference between market price and production cost (including cost of labor). There is nothing inherently wrong with that latter mode of production, except that it never reaches a dynamic equilibrium. Since it's surplus savings that enable the acquisition and direction of other producers (i.e. their labor), and that process leads to additional surpluses, the accumulation of surplus becomes exponential. At some point, the surplus becomes sufficient to apply compulsion on other producers, thus effectively eroding the free market that led to that mode of production in the first place.
- vrganj 2mo ago
  I really appreciate the self-reflective answer and I fully understand the conflict. You seem like a thoughtful dude, kudos. I fully agree with your assessment about capitalism devolving into either fascism or some sort of feudalism. I, too, have been struggling with what a more just system could look like. Personally, some aspects of Yugoslav worker self-management appeal to me. Basic idea is: Companies compete on a market, but theres no stock market. Companies <= 5 employees can be run however the founders envisioned, past that boundary the board and exec suite are required to be elected by the workers. Combined with state grants and regulations to direct the overall direction of the economy, I feel like it solves for a lot of issues of shareholder capitalism without swapping them for a whole separate set of Commissariat problems. Of course, the state itself wasn't democratic in Yugoslavia and it suffered from ethnic tensions that ultimately tore it apart. But we don't need to copy their setup wholesale. Wonder how you'd feel about something like that?
marcosdumay 2mo ago
You can't be a neo-liberal. Despite what people keep repeating on the internet, capitalism is a very general idea, and growth at all costs is not a value from it exactly.

by vrganj 2mo ago

vixen99 2mo ago

You're not going to do anything at all without money as a fungible exchange mechanism (a sometime measure of 'value'). Capitalists see value in things and try to generate that value. Yes, politicians and the rest of us have the job of regulating that process and sometime fail to do a good job. Do you know the right thing to do? I doubt it. You seriously do not see this as an immensely complicated issue? Finally please give chapter and verse for the 'dying'. Maybe compare the world of 2026 with that of 1900 and the quality of life for people in general and our concern for the life on this planet. Concern isn't action but it's a necessary prerequisite for it.

vrganj 2mo ago
> Capitalists see value in things and try to generate that value Value for who? Value as determined by who? > Finally please give chapter and verse for the 'dying'. You're commenting on it right now. Rivers here are drying out. Glaciers are melting. Forests are burning. How long do you think we can keep going like this? > Maybe compare the world of 2026 with that of 1900 and the quality of life for people in general and our concern for the life on this planet. You can compare the results of those 126 years right here: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/01/23/learning/GlobalTempGraphLN/GlobalTempGraphLN-superJumbo.png https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/01/23/learning/GlobalTe... Regarding your quality of life claim, let me refer back to the burning forests, drying rivers etc. Would you call that an improvement? Clearly, its not going great. And action is actively being sabotaged by the most capitalist major power: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/climate/trump-climate-international-bullying.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/climate/trump-climate-int... So how do we proceed with all this in mind? How long can we keep optimizing for capital self-reproduction at the expense of the base conditions we survive on? The incentive structure does not allow for making the systemic changes required for continued thriving of humanity. What good is it then? How is it anything but a suicide pact?
- nec4b 2mo ago
  >>Value for who? Value as determined by who? Value for us, real people who have needs. We decide what we want to buy and not some apparatchik on their pedestal. >>Rivers here are drying out. Glaciers are melting. Forests are burning. As if this never happened before capitalism?
  - vrganj 2mo ago
    Who is "us"? Because in capitalism, only people with capital get to decide what has value. The values of the poor are not reflected. The values of the indigenous are not reflected. The values of the non-capitalist are not reflected. The value of the unborn is not reflected. The value of nature is not reflected. The glacier doesn't participate in the market and neither does the river. Are they without value? > As if this never happened before capitalism? That's correct. Look at the graph I posted above, you'll notice that things weren't always this hot. Before capitalism they sure weren't.
    - nec4b 2mo ago
      No, every one participates. Ordinary people the most, because the capitalist first and foremost need to provide value to us. I'm not sure what do you mean by rivers, glaciers or others not participating in the market? Isn't it evident people assign great value to natural resources. The world is a bit older then 120 years in your graph. There were a lot of natural disasters that wiped quite a lot of living beings from the planet.
      - vrganj 2mo ago
        > No, every one participates. Ordinary people the most That is just straight up not true. The tribal elder in the Amazon, who's forest capitalists are burning down never got asked how he defines value. The child not yet born was never asked if it's atmosphere should be heated up for data centers. Neither was the fish in the river or the river itself for that matter. > what do you mean by rivers, glaciers or others not participating in the market? I'm not sure what's unclear. The glacier melts as a result of somebody who's not the glacier deciding "value" on a market. In reality, the market doesn't decide value. Value is not price. The market decides power structures and violence distribution. The glacier has a value completely separate from the market, and not derived from it. > There were a lot of natural disasters Why are we pivoting to natural disasters now?
dgellow 2mo ago
Money and value exist in all economical systems and has existed in some form since immemorial times, that has literally nothing to do with capitalism, an ideology developed over the past 250y or so
- xfil 2mo ago
  Also, our current system grossly undermines the functionality of our market economy. A lack of pricing for negative externalities will essentially always result in the basic concept of market failure. Run inaccurate pricing of carbon emissions long enough and something bad is bound to happen. Same ordeal with cattle ranching & agriculture to feed it in the Amazon basin: >20% of the 55-million-year-old Amazon rainforest has been degraded for cattle in the past 55 years, partially because consumers don't pay accurate prices and producers don't pay accurate costs. The unwillingness to merely partially solve obvious market failures via accurate pricing is a catastrophic hypocrisy in those among us who thump their chests about 'free markets' while conflating the concept with modern capitalism.

dgellow 2mo ago

I honestly don’t know and feel very conflicted about my own ideology. I recognize how broken it is at scale, but also value the personal autonomy, entrepreneurship, nonconformity capitalism promotes. Though my version of capitalism isn’t the libertarian free market one, libertarianism will always evolve into oligarchy or something fascistic given enough time, it’s just baked into the incentives. My personal ideology aligns with a managed capitalism, markets are created by an authority that ensures the incentives aligns with its overall goals. Mixed with very liberal social values. I don’t know if that can survive overtime though. And that would very likely degenerate into something else when under stress. As I said, I feel conflicted. But I appreciate the question

hliyan 2mo ago
Perhaps this will help: commerce, free market and capitalism are three different things. Commerce, or trade, has existed for millennia, even among tribes and villages. The free market emerges when there are multiple producers of a good or service, and there is no compulsion upon any producer (from either a third party or another producer) to buy or sell. Capitalism would be when one or more of these producers no longer need to engage in production themselves, but are able to use their surplus savings to employ other producers and then keep for themselves the difference between market price and production cost (including cost of labor). There is nothing inherently wrong with that latter mode of production, except that it never reaches a dynamic equilibrium. Since it's surplus savings that enable the acquisition and direction of other producers (i.e. their labor), and that process leads to additional surpluses, the accumulation of surplus becomes exponential. At some point, the surplus becomes sufficient to apply compulsion on other producers, thus effectively eroding the free market that led to that mode of production in the first place.
vrganj 2mo ago
I really appreciate the self-reflective answer and I fully understand the conflict. You seem like a thoughtful dude, kudos. I fully agree with your assessment about capitalism devolving into either fascism or some sort of feudalism. I, too, have been struggling with what a more just system could look like. Personally, some aspects of Yugoslav worker self-management appeal to me. Basic idea is: Companies compete on a market, but theres no stock market. Companies <= 5 employees can be run however the founders envisioned, past that boundary the board and exec suite are required to be elected by the workers. Combined with state grants and regulations to direct the overall direction of the economy, I feel like it solves for a lot of issues of shareholder capitalism without swapping them for a whole separate set of Commissariat problems. Of course, the state itself wasn't democratic in Yugoslavia and it suffered from ethnic tensions that ultimately tore it apart. But we don't need to copy their setup wholesale. Wonder how you'd feel about something like that?

marcosdumay 2mo ago

You can't be a neo-liberal. Despite what people keep repeating on the internet, capitalism is a very general idea, and growth at all costs is not a value from it exactly.