Asklemmy

A lot of people here are giving various answers, and that's for 2 reasons. You asked a very loaded question in a lemmy instance that started with an explicitly socialist bend, and you're essentially asking people about very personal reasons they hold a political belief.

Everyone's political beliefs are shaped by the conditions of their life. For example, I grew up poor on a rural farm in the Midwest of the US. Over time due to various things, I had several life situations impact my views on politics and the world. I started to learn things, things that didn't make sense, things that challenged my world view, things that I knew were wrong but didn't know why they happened. Eventually, I rejected liberalism and needed to find something else. That something else came in the form of a walkout at my workplace. I was thrust into the labor movement. Now I'm an anarcho-syndicalist (I believe all hierarchy is bad including capitalism and governments, and the people should govern themselves through unions and other forms of organizing).

This is a very, very brief description of my life from when I was born to literally right now, and how it impacted my beliefs. This process of life impacting personal political beliefs is called our "material conditions". People may have similar material conditions and completely disagree, or drastically different material conditions and agree on everything. More and more Americans are seeing and feeling the dramatic impacts of capitalism and the power of a few people on the top. That is driving people both to the anticapitalist left and to the fascist alt-right. Whatever reasons you read here, know that they're justifications for their material conditions causing them to take a radical position.

“I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself…” is one of the weirder things I’ve read on here. Socialist or not, that’s weird to me.

Capitalism is just feudalism with extra steps.

The Lemmy developers are very anti-capitalist and this is one of the first instances, the one that they are most liked to. Like attracted like, leading to a lot of users being anti-capitalist.

Other instances have different internal cultures due to how and why they were formed.

This is a decentralized platform meant to be a social media system without the corporate power inherent to all the others. The developers of Lemmy for example have essays on Maoist China being hosted on their Github.

By its very nature, it's going to attract people who are trying to get away from corporate influence. It's essentially why I'm here and not on reddit. I don't want a company profiting off of my content.

There's space for pro-capitalists as well though. I believe in the open market of ideas - listen to what people have to say and share your bit. Engage genuinely and you'll learn something and maybe teach someone else something.

I think that I hear the argument against capitalism the most from people who reference unskilled labor. Sure, the person working in a warehouse is getting screwed wage-wise because the company is greedy and they doesn't have a unique skill set. But the guy in the office that is maintaining a proprietary piece of software has the leverage to demand a higher wage. I think when it comes down to it, capitalism is just another version of the economic "game". I prefer this game to socialism (or really any other economic philosophy) as I know how to work the current system better. Don't want to get screwed in your career? Specialize! I understand a lot of people don't want to hear this as it puts the impetus on us instead of the rich,, but that's how the system works (for now). I will always be on-board with people wanting to better themselves and their situation (especially at the expense of the rich) but getting something for nothing just isn't realistic without massive mobilization of the lowest wage earners. Not to mention the hurdles in our government.

Most people who hate capitalism are focusing in on its evil brother, "unfettered capitalism". UC is a shit show which has created many of the problems we see today and is the unholy unity created when big business and the government combine. When done right, capitalism pushes to lower costs and improve services for consumers. Companies competing is a good thing. Unfortunately the greed of corporations knows no bounds which is when UC enters the picture and fucks everything up.

There are a lot of good answers here. My perspective is that captialism generally doesn't serve the common person, and that essential services should under no circumstances be privatized.

Captialism is a race to the bottom in terms of cost, but this can only be achieved by sacrificing quality of goods, or by underpaying workers after a certain point.

For instance, look at the vape industry as a microcosm for captialism. A new need/desire was identified by the market. Everyone and their dog tried to capitalize on this by creating shops that met this demand. Shop owners took out ridiculous loans, didn't get their supply chains organized etc. Eventually the ones that were smart or lucky enough survived, while everyone else lost their shirts. Tada. Streamlined industry. Now that this is achieved, and vape juice is highly substitutable, the only way to compete and still make the same amount of revenue is to:

1. Lower prices in hopes of attracting customer while providing the same product. This is risky, so generally not done.

2. Find cheaper products of poorer quality and sell them hoping your consumers don't notice or don't care.

3. Underpay your workers.

Eventually, you end up with an Amazon esque scenario where workers are paid in dog shit, and products suck. while you get a streamlined production line, a lot of people get hurt establish it and maintaining your competitive advantage. Finally, the vape market crashed after the hype and even more people lost money.

Now repeat this process with something as vital as healthcare (which again is relatively substitutable). The system only worships the allnmighty buck and doesn't give a shit for people's well being.

Socialism doesn't scale up. Capitalism doesn't scale down.