Capitalism Debate: Hypocrisy or Balanced View? | FriendZone

Sidewalks are public, why are you walking on sidewalks? Capitalism is better right? I monetized the sidewalk, you have to pay me to walk on them now.

Oxygen is public, and free, why are you breathing it? you should pay for it, you thief, I monetized air, you need to pay me for every breath you take now.

You support capitalism wholly, so that means you better not have gone to a public school, or visited a public library, or shat in a public restroom.

.

You mentioned balanced opinion, please acknowledge it's 'flaws'

I don't think you're well versed enough to know them, but surprise me, you have the floor.

jesus do you not understand the take?
the monopolistic aspect, lobbying, dynamic pricing and enshittification are its flaws.

now tell me some benefits tht capitalism has that socialism can never provide. provide the other side of it

I'd say, innovation, and economic growth.

freedom of choices and options, large scale unemployment, some meritocracy albeit flawed

Do you have freedom of choice, financially, as you are right now in this capitalistic society.

💀

The point of this take.

yep. i do. if i want a service or goods for most things i have choices. for food i have 100s of restaurants, for tech, for jobs, for banking

dont put words in my mouth. i never said that

Wait large scale unemployment???? as a benefit capitalism can provide that socialism can't??

I was summarizing.

yep. socialism large scale employement has been a disaster. soviet union is the perfect example

its not summarizing if you push your agenda by falsely summarizing my words

Soviets aren't socialists, or well, aren't TRUE socialists anyway.

True socialism requires workers to directly own and democratically manage the means of production. In the Soviet Union, control was held by a centralized, authoritarian bureaucratic elite rather than the workers themselves.

which country would you say is truly socialist then

Off the top of my head, the closest estimate I can think of is Cuba, before the US funded a campaign to topple him.

cuba is socialist too

"Chile is primarily a mixed-market capitalist economy, though its government features a strong democratic socialist presence. The country operates as a high-income, open-market economy heavily rooted in private enterprise."

Yeah but the example I was thinking of is chile when it was still socialist.

lemme find links.

is there maybe a reason why socialist countries are so rare and often end up turning into capitalist

Well, Chile, in this example, had rebel groups funded by the USA.

to counter that, many capitalist countries hae had rebel groups, terrorism, but still managed to survive, grow

while many socialist countries have a coup and change.

maybe one is more fragile

You're forgetting that chile was a much weaker, much smaller country, of course a global superpower can fund enough rebel groups to collapse a much smaller country.

i mean there's many small countries that have faced such coups, terrorist activities, not usa, that have still managed to survive and grow

as in, the usa wasn't the only one who intervened.

seems like adaptability ensures survival and growth. opening the markets, more free trade globally seems to be win win rather than isolating the country

Because it's actively beat on and ridiculed by those in power because if socialism comes into practice, THEIR influence will weaken?

My support for socialism isn't because it's perfect, it's because it's better than what we have right now, as the rich are so rich and powerful that rights are trampled on regularly.

socialist country is ruled by people. and people are corrupt, seek power. it could be 100x better in theory but if in practice it awlays fails, is it really good?

only time will tell. but as long as human nature is the same, i dont believe socialism will work

Capitalism is ruled by people too, and it worked, for a time, and it's not working anymore.

if it cannot be implemented realistically then its just an idea, its not better

In theory??

It has been implemented realistically tho.

what part?

The example I mentioned, Chile, the video I sent u should mention how they implemented it, and how it worked, and how it was successful.

Until the big bad US of the A intervened.

if something goes bad after turbulance then it is not long term viable option

That's not really an argument against it, tho. 💀

Cause like, By that logic, no political or economic system is viable, because every country has to deal with external pressure, sanctions, coups, wars, trade disruptions, or foreign interference too.

My point isn't "can it survive with literally zero problems?" the thing I'm pushing is, "can it function when implemented?"

when a country successfully implements a policy and achieves its goals for years and or decades, then it has demonstrated viability. Outside/external coups(like you said)/intervention causing it to fail later doesn't prove the original implementation was impossible or unworkable, it proves outside actors were powerful enough to disrupt it, which is my point, Chile at the time was a small country, the US was a GLOBAL superpower. 💀 It's like expecting an ant to succeed against a human.

Otherwise, we'd have to say capitalism isn't viable either, because capitalist countries have collapsed due to wars, invasions, financial crises, and coups.

my point is capitalism, despite is flaws has proven to be anti fragile, handling shocks and disasters, while socialism may work perfectly when huamsn arent greedy,power seeking and there's no coups but its not realistic

It could depend on what country it's being used in, since not every country benefits from it

can you elaborate? i didnt quite get you

A country which has utilised the capitalist ideology for decades and is in for example the west will benefit from it more than an unstable country outside of that which had less time to implement it (if that makes sense)

Anti fragile doesn't mean "never fails" tho

shit like, Argentina, the 2008 financial crisis, the Great Depression, the Asian Financial Crisis, the IMF crisis in korea in like the late 1900s, countless capitalist states collapsing into dictatorship or civil war is that the sign of a perfectly anti-fragile system???

Capitalism survives its failures because countries reform, regulate, and adapt to whatever just happened, because if they don't, they collapse. That's not anti-fragile, that's just resilience.

If you're allowed to count every capitalist country that reforms itself as capitalism succeeding, then socialist countries that reform themselves should count too.

i agree with that.
although i would push back and say that in unstable countries or low income countries, growth matters evene more (which capitalism provides), mature, rich countries can have socialist aspects (like norway, denmark)

while poor countries cannot afford to have socialist values and need growth asap

Chile was a poor country, it raised it's own GDP, Pushed itself out of debt, lowered the gap, raised the amount of people going to school, all in a few short months.

Growth is needed but it's been shown that capitalism doesn't work for them, it's not a fast process and it took decades (since WW2) for richer countries to actually work well with it

around 95-98% of countries in the world are capitalistic. more or less, out of that a dozen or so failures is reasonable. realistic.

and out of all the socialist countries throughout history why isnt there a single one that still is thriving? ik coups are a reason but despite that there must be at least 3-4 coutnries truly socialist that work no?

capitalism indeed works for them. post wwii many countries shifted to capitalism and recovered. it brings inquality, massive amouns of it, dont get me wrong

but if the rich get 100x richer but the poor get only 10x richer and gain a reasnoably safe environment, isnt it better than everyone being poor without it?

capitalism brings lot of inequality but raises the livign standards off the bottom 10% as well. its a positive sum game

That's only worked for richer countries in for example Europe and America, it can't be said the same for most of the world were gap gets larger and people suffer due to failing economies more

south korea is a prime example of non european, american country. its got many issues, but realistically its better to live there than most of the other non us/eu countries

many other countries have risne their standards significantly by capitalism, they're not top tier like us, eu but they've gone from 1000 usd per capita income to 10k or so in some decades

have you seen the reason why poor countries fail? its either insane debt or unstable govt

if you give loans wih loose conditions, they'll blow it

South Korea is a commercial hub atp and functionals very differently from the average country, basically everything there has become commercialised

You're moving goal posts.

You started at "socialism can't be implemented realistically, only 'good in idea'"

Now we're at "why aren't there several rich socialist superpowers?"

A system doesn't have to become the dominant global model to prove it can function. Most countries being capitalist today doesn't prove capitalism is superior. Most countries were monarchies for most of human history too, does that mean feudalism is better??????

Capitalism has had centuries to develop across most of the planet and was, and still IS heavily backed by the dominant military and economic powers of Our era, and the era before that.

Socialist governments have been relatively rare, many were poor countries to begin with, and several faced sanctions, coups, invasions, embargoes, or Cold War containment.

Whether you think socialism is ultimately inferior or not, that's not a fair starting comparison.

Circling back, If your standard is "thriving country," then what counts?

Vietnam is socialist, it has experienced decades of strong growth, and it's not slowing down.

China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty under a Communist Party government, not socialist, but my point still stands, is communism now the superior example because it succeeded? Popularity and dominance tell us what won historically, not what is best, or better.

singapore has benefitted a lot from it too. india is also on a growth track, lifintg 100s of millions of out poverty

Both but the world operates in a connected way and these countries don't always control what goes on for them, loans also are held by richer nations (USA has many of those companies headquartered there)

you must be ignorant to think china is a true socialist. its a mxed economy. it's one of the most aggressibely capitalistic countries while also being mixed with regulation

its no way a true socialist

Singapore is a small island and operates very differently to other countries, India may be growing but it still has extreme issues (yet I get they have more to do since it's a bunch of states working as one country)

india has issues, but lifting 100s million people out of poverty is a big feat. and it happened when they opened their economy up.

ive given exmaples of multiple countries, big and small now. socialism sounds perfect in theory, but implementing it is unrealistic imo as humans are greedy, power seeking

Often it doesn't allow those countries to invest in mainly public industries, they wanna privatise everything and don't put anything in for the ppl like hospitals and schools and it's around a capitalist framework

i think free hopsitals and schools makes sense, shoudl be implemented. i agree fully with that

but industries being public is a big no no for me, at least non core industries. many socialist seming countries with "public" industires is just a bunch of oligarchs who own it. its not truly owned by the people

Maybe and yh it's not perfect but it still doesn't work for every country, also not saying socialism is a better solution either

my point in the start was capitalism has lot of flaws, but it seems to have many benefits thatt people conveniently ignore

then we shifted to how socialism seems perfect in theory but unrealistic in practice. thats all. i think you and i agree on most of the broad aspects of it

same. i'll sleep now. good day

I quite literally said 'not socialist, but my point still stands'

You wouldn't say the same if ur a Congolese whom they starve for ts