You see it all started when some dumb motherfuckers decided to leave the relatively plentiful African Savannah for the dead-land that was the desert. Then they had to invent agriculture and it was all downhill from there.
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Maybe overpopulation is a factor?
It's not overpopulation. We are seeing the results of late stage capitalism coming into effect. When you design the economy around an owning class vs a working class, the owning class will use its inherent leverage and capital to beget more leverage and capital. That happens at the expense of the working class. If your income mainly comes from working for money, you are part of the working class.
The obvious solution here is to change the economic structure to not have an owning class at all or at least to keep it in check, but liberalism is not good at keeping it in check and leftism doesn't have the momentum needed to change the world economic structure. Right now all we can do is make progress where we can, which means passing legislation that taxes and weakens the owning class in favor of supporting and empowering the working class through social programs and better pay and benefits. Unions will help you a TON here and more quickly than legislation, so look into joining/forming a union. Biden has changed the requirements for forming a union to make it really easy now. The other thing we can do is prevent fascists from tearing apart the systems we've built to allow that to even happen in the first place. That means not voting for or supporting right-wing politics.
None of this is caused by overpopulation, and the myth that overpopulation is the main source of your problems directly benefits the owning class who is currently winning the zero-sum dynamic of owning vs working class. That dynamic is the reason things are bad and worsening. Join a union and vote for the most progressive viable candidate in both local and federal elections.
Capitalism. The longer Capitalism exists, the more it has to find new ways to stop/slow its own built-in death clock. If it doesn't, it dies, due to problems like the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall and rising disparity. Enshittification, so to speak.
With each economic disaster, the wealthiest of the bourgeoisie can claim large swaths of cheaper Capital at a discount, compounding the issue into a form of neo-feudalism that will eventually collapse under its own weight.
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One of the major reasons is that Milton Friedman had a thought back in the 70s that fucking everyone in the western world latched onto, and the consequences have been getting worse and worse for the average person for most of the time since then.
Of course, neoliberals don't actually believe in neoliberalism, they profit off it's failure.
If you give a rich person even more money and it never trickles down, you just gave a rich person money. If you're claim companies will regulate themselves and they don't, you just gave companies the freedom to do exploitative, dangerous things in search of bigger profits.
If neoliberalism actually delivered on any of its promises, neoliberals wouldn't support it.
It's nothing more than a book of pre-made lies that sound plausible enough for a press conference and signal to other neoliberals that their feeding trough is being filled.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The question "Why has the world gone to shit in the past 5 to 10 years" has routinely been asked every five to ten years throughout history. It's largely due to the perceptual biases of the human mind.
For the US it all started (well more accelerated) with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC#Opinion_of_the_court and since we have a knock on effect with the rest of the world...
Wtf I didn't know that there is a clear reason for corpos getting political! Thank you for this, I really had no idea about it!
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Late stage capitalism
Covid made things worse, but the fundamentals were bad.
We are in the middle of a massive tightening of the labor market as boomers retire and there aren't enough young adults to fill the gap. This is causing major ripples in the market, with a very antagonistic relationship forming between capital trying to keep labor costs down and labor tired of the bullshit.
This is causing some mild inflation, so companies are jacking up prices since they have an excuse to. This increased inflation is making the time value of money cost more. So now you have companies that were losing money having to scramble to finally generate a profit. This is causing the enshittification of the Internet and the loss of jobs in the tech sector.
The worse economy is causing political problems as it is harder for politicians to justify their positions in power. This encourages conflict between nations and the justification to deny some people of social benefits to create an underclass to benefit voters.
Capitalism seems to run in a cyclic manner. If you remember in the 80s we had movies like Wall Street and Other People's Money, because I think things were at a similar point then to where they are now. But, through the 90s (and I joined the workforce in the mid 90s) I recall a more customer-centric view, and even some level of consideration for employees. This has gradually deteriorated starting in the new millennium.
The last 10 years I think has seen this accelerate such that the only consideration for a company is to the shareholders (public or private), customers are in the equation somewhere but way, way after providing value to shareholders via cost-cutting in any way possible. Employees are absolutely just a cost of doing business and if they could eliminate them too, they surely would.
The only hope I have is that I've seen this reverse before, so it CAN happen again. But what makes me place some doubt about this is headlines like the four richest people doubling their net-worth in an incredibly short period. The economy is a zero-sum game, if they doubled their worth other people lost everything, MANY people needed to lose everything to achieve that. Those people need to lose, and lose a lot to bring us back, and I can't imagine they will let that happen.
Maybe things will improve, maybe there will be a revolution/uprising when it just gets too bad. Who knows?
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Capitalist governments are pro-finance, not pro-people. Totalitarian gvmts (China etc) are pro-system, not pro-people. They're just different ways of maintaining classes of people who control the power/finances.
There's always been an uber-rich elite, all the way from the first tribal chieftain or Pharaoh or whatever until now and there's always been a huge underclass of the rest of us. The first law of any hierarchy is to protect the people at the top.
What we see today (in Westernised countries) is the natural, logical progression of economics driven democracy. Economic theorists say wealthy people create wealth by purposefully distributing it via jobs etc but in reality they do everything possible to minimise the loss of what they see as their money by abusing labour laws, privatising everything, trying to kill unions, creating convoluted laws to protect their fortunes, avoiding taxes and hiking prices up to the point most of us are just about surviving with enough carrot to ignore or pretend we don't see the stick.
And we're willing participants in that system. We know this is happening but we're dazzled by lotteries holding out the chance to join the rich, promises of work making us rich and a media which lionises the elite as some kind of fabulous aspirational status to the point we have people on social media faking a rich lifestyle for internet points.
The uber rich believe they're better than us and our acquiescence with this system really means we agree with them.
I agree broadly with much of your assessment of history and many of the problems that bely current western society. The rich might be exploiting capitalism to their benefit but a capitalist system with proper regulation will always be better (in terms of Quality of life and freedom) for larger groups of people Than a planned economy.
Planned economies were the means to the end not the end. Basing it around authoritarian, suppressive, dictatorial government is what made it the end. That said, apart from freedom of speech issues. Capitalism struggles in most aspects to truly be better, even at its best. Because capitalism ends up authoritarian and suppressive as well. Those with all the wealthy and resources don't tolerate those who are against their theft.
We should be moving past both.
Okay, but what does a system look like that moves past both? How do you ensure people get resources if you don't want capitalism or a planned economy?
By implementing the thing Marxist-leninists were loathe to implement despite giving a lot of lip service. Actual communism. Not the Engles lenin variety. But the kind Marx spoke on. The thing to remember is that the Soviet Communist party was as communist as the national socialist party of Germany was socialist. Which is to say neither of them were.
This of course all starts with actual large scale engagement. We absolutely need to change the voting system etc as a start. For all the flaws and problems of the founding fathers, the fact that they saw us needing to largely rewrite the Constitution every few decades, let alone every few hundred years was not one of their flaws.
Then we need to uncap the House of Representatives. That's a century overdue. Followed by abolishing the electoral college. Then reforming the house, Senate, judiciary and even the concept of the presidency. Basically take as many steps as necessary to make things as democratic/granular as possible. Dilute power.
One of the other important things we could do is abolishing the concept of private property. Private property is little more than theft. Allowing the wealthy to horde resources to the detriment of everyone else. If you own a home, you should be living in it. It shouldn't be some sort of an investment that you never spend time in. Used for speculation on markets etc. Replace private property with something much more sane like the more limited concept of personal property. As in property, a person would actually use themselves. Tying legal fines and fees to a person's income and wealth along with impartial enforcement is another good start.
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You see, it all started in May, 2016 with this Gorilla being killed. That's when this timeline split off....
Unregulated capitalism...
This is the natural result of that.
COVID factored in because the handful of corporations that own a shit ton of companies figured out 8% inflation could be used as justification to double/triple prices, and if they all did it, consumers had no options.
In regulated capitalism, the government would step in to prevent this type of price fixing.
But when both political parties are "pro business" and take donations from those huge corporations...
Then corporations get away with lots they shouldn't
In regulated capitalism, the government would step in to prevent this type of price fixing.
like this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/yale-columbia-price-fixing-settlement.html
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/19/rice-university-price-fixing-lawsuit/
Company makes a billion dollars and then it's fined 200 million, ten years later because a private citizen sues them...
Is this government regulation?
You're a meme. And by that I mean, you're a joke.
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The US has this bizarre setup where we "regulate" companies through the courts rather than directly through government agencies (this is not always the case, but it often is). The problem is that even when this "works", i.e., the court punishes the company, they get a fine. So it becomes a financial decision: if we can get away with this, does that outweigh the risk that we might not? Sometimes it ends up profiting the company regardless.
Related to this is that prosecutors have total discretion in the realm of plea deals. If you do a crime here, it becomes a negotiation with the prosecutor. What can you offer them to get off the hook? Sometimes it makes sense to do a crime, because the advantages you gain become leverage to negotiate your way out of punishment.
The US has this bizarre setup where we “regulate” companies through the courts rather than directly through government agencies (this is not always the case, but it often is).
I'm afraid that I don't understand what sort of alternative system you have in mind.
Basically do what Europe does. Government regulators actively monitor companies and stop them from misbehaving, rather than waiting for them to misbehave and then sue them. If they don't follow regulations they get disbanded. It's not perfect but it's better than what we have here.
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I looked at some of those, and it's private citizens suing corporations...
Even the rent one with the DOJ, it's just them becoming involved in private lawsuits...
That's not the same as the government regulating capitalism.
And while that one is sort of related to the topic, not really. It's because the price fixing is automated by a computer program a bunch of landlords used.
In the future if you only give one link and some kind of explanation other than "like this?" The person you replied to can probably do a better job of helping you understand.
I looked at some of those, and it’s private citizens suing corporations…
That’s not the same as the government regulating capitalism.
This is like saying that Texas doesn't regulate abortion because it's just private citizens filing lawsuits. That is bullshit.
Without the regulations, there would be no legal basis for filing a lawsuit.
Because corporate greed and the economic elite around the world hoarding more resources than ever before.
And we let them.
That is such a lazy argument. More people then ever before are out of poverty in the history of mankind. Doesn't mean there are not problems. In regards to COVID, we took millions of people out of the workforce while printing money and still paying many of them? Of course that will result in massive reduction of inventory levels that we will feel for a decade. That results in inflation as what do people expect when less items available to the same amount of people that want them.
Regards to qualities etc. That varies. We have more access to products then at anytime in history as well. And many of these products have come down significantly in price. But that also means quality products and their prices get compared to shit products at lower prices. What do you think people buy? Secondary, people do far less informal work and that effects your perception of income. Our parents and grandparents maintained their own cars and houses for example and grew far more food. Now every hires that out and buys all their groceries at a store. That leaves you with far less money.
Then there is one industry that has made gains but their costs has gone up ten fold. That is healthcare. You have access to some of the best medical procedures then at anytime in history. But some of those costs can be North of a million dollars. Our parents and grandparents simply did not access that and in some cases died. I am happy I have now options but this is coming at a huge cost of which much of it has to be paid for upfront before you retire.
You could kill off every billionaire tomorrow but that won't result in much more houses being built or available. Wealth inequality is an issue but if more cogs are not manufactured, our standard of living will not change much.
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We don't just let them, we cheer them on. Look at the celebrity worship culture we humans have. If you took away the person and left only their actions, most of us would happily throw the rich into a woodchipper. But they use their money to convince us that they're special and deserve praise, and most of us go along with it because we're sheep.
Pioneer woman.
She's got a huge ranch a huge house a specialty made kitchen just for her show.. works super hard to look blue collar.
It's all crafted to separate you from your money..
While I agree her image is at the very least somewhat exaggerated, her net worth probably puts her somewhere in the top 10%. She's not exactly the powerful elite.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drummond_family_(Oklahoma)
She’s married into one of the wealthiest families in Oklahoma.
Completely excluding the tens of millions she herself is worth from her business.
Rae Drummond has a reported net worth of approx $65m as of last year.
The top 1% of United States net worth starts at $12m. She is just inside the top 0.1% of us net worth which starts at $62m.
Hell, her last name alone gives it away.
The Drummond family is one of the wealthiest families in Oklahoma, owning hundreds of thousands of acres of land.
Wealthy enough they have their own Wikipedia page.