Ask Lemmy

Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top. Nothing about it is a meritocracy, its a funnel of money straight to whoever can exploit the system more than the rest. Has nothing to do with merit, but to "get yours" through whatever means necessary, including crushing those employees who actually do the hard labor that they then extract wealth from.

Both. It's kind of like asking if monarchy is the problem or if the problem is just evil kings. Theoretically even a dictatorship can work out well for the people given a benevolent dictator. The issue is with the vulnerabilities inherent in the system. For capitalism, it's that those with more money have more influence and thus it creates a feedback loop where those with more money have more power to get themselves more money and therefore more power and so on.

Bracing for downvotes here...

Capitalism is good when properly regulated. Capitalism is an incredible tool for raising living standards, which should be the ultimate goal of any aociety. Disfunctional capitalism produces inequity.

Now I know someone is going to say that capitalists tend to accrue power, to which I say that is EVERY system. They ALL need to be kept in check. Socialism, feudalism, anarchy, oligarchy, it doesn't matter. Someone will try to accrue power. The economic system MUST be subordinate to the government, and ideally that government should represent the will (or at least the best interests) of the people.

I am FIRMLY in the "the system is broken and needs to be fixed" camp. Regulatory capture is a result of disfunctional capitalism. Monopolies are a result of disfunctional capitalism. Cronyism is a result of disfunctional capitalism. Capitalism as a system is not inherently bad except in the way that any system when allowed to run unchecked is bad.

A strong government hand, when wielded by empathetic and civic-minded people, is a requirement for any economic system. Given that, capitalism is the best economic model the world has ever seen.

Edit: pleasantly surprised. Shitlibs assemble?

Nepotism obviously existed before capitalism, and it will surely exist at some level in the next economic system, but it's not an either/or. There are many, many problems with capitalism that would probably still exhibit if nepotism somehow immediately ceased.

Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (there is a less marxist term about top level economic property I'm totally spacing on here so take some Marx and quit yer complaining, it's the same thing) and has nothing to do with merit.

That has always been capitalist propaganda. The ability to participate in capital has nothing to do with merit.

I earn more than most medical doctors in my home country. They save lives, while I write software that could disappear tomorrow and no chaos would ensue. But I do earn my employers more money than the doctor does.

The only world in which this is right is a world where you only care about yourself and being rich. Meritocracy is inherently subjective and depends largely of what you value to give people merit, and in a lot of cases that's "we fucked over two dozen tiny companies with patent troll lawsuits and made millions".

Deregulation is the problem.

• allowing companies to merge until they become “too big to fail”
• allowing companies to poison our environment and our bodies without fear of substantial repercussions
• allowing companies to make false product claims without fear of substantial repercussions
• allowing companies to lobby and contribute to political campaigns even though they can’t vote

I think people are being extraordinarily polite for something that was clearly debatelord bait.

If you think capitalism and greed go hand in hand, as I do, then it's capitalism. Netflix, for one, was a great service and it's been profitable for decades but the price hikes, account sharing crackdowns, and increasing promotion of own content really turned it into shit, all in the name of more profits.

Why do you think Capitalism has meritocracy as a core component?

Capitalism is a system where capital needs to be converted into more capital via economic action (reinvestment) rather than just sat upon.

Capital will always find ways to grow, if there are laws - they will be lobbied against. Or those with main market share will work together to stabilise the market and squash competition.

The issue with pure capitalism is that it reduces people's interactions to their economic value but some people do not have economic value, or have little economic value and no power to redress it. So capitalism can be efficient but can also be efficiently cold hearted.

Nepotism is only an issue where owners define it as an issue. Obviously the workforce at large stands to benefit from meritocracy but so do shareholders. In a free market, inadequate appointments due to nepotism should put a company at a disadvantage. But compare that with a family farm where the owners (shareholders) might prefer nepotism (appointment of a son/daughter to management) rather than opening the role to the job market. Few people object to this small scale nepotism, but should they object if shareholders of a large corporation wanted to do the same? Isn't it their money after all? The chief issues with nepotism are when it's done against the wishes of the owners of the company. But this is increasingly difficult with shareholder approval of board members and so on.

Obviously nepotism into monopolistic companies is a problem because of lack of competition but this only joins all the other problems already caused by monopolies.

In a healthy capitalism, competition is maintained. And if that's done then the risks presented by nepotism are diminished because poor appointments ought to lead to poor results.

Ironically, it's in extensive socialist state monopolies that nepotism is most dangerous primarily because of the decreased market competition.

You should define what you think is capitalism, cronyism, and meritocracy, because you seem to have an answer in your head that you don't wish to divulge.

Capitalism is the idea that those that own the means of production own the profits from them.

Meritocracy is the idea that those with skill will prevail over those without.

I will argue that capitalism IS meritocratic, but the problem is that that which capitalism holds in high merits is that which generates capital at the fastest rate. Good products do not necessarily earn more money over bad products faster. Capitalism only cares about the fastest acquisition of capital through whatever barriers are present. This means it inherently does not care about labor that doesn't generate profit (immediately).

Those that hold capital get to choose what merits we look for. Software developers or teachers, which can make more money? Childcare workers or lawyers, which can make more money? We pretend like the difference in these jobs and their pay is skill, but we treat various labor differently because we assign a higher capital interest to some labor, like the ability to write a contract or write a program, and a lower capital interest to other labor, like taking care of a child or teaching someone valuable skills. We pretend like physical, emotional, and reproductive labor is less skillful than intellectual labor because it doesn't make as much money for capital, but the truth is that only capital gets to choose what is high-skilled and what gets to be paid like it's high-skilled.

Thus, while capitalism is meritocratic in a sense, it is not meritocratic for workers, and will always devolve into a class-based system by design. I could argue that by choosing what is worth more money, they create their own cronyism, but that is really more of a moot point.

There can be more than one problem.

Capitalism is a problem… along with a shitload of other problems.

Capitalism isn't the problem. Any economy run by human beings is going to have cronyism.