Personally, I think our government needs a major overhaul. They let the big companies do whatever they want because of lobbying.
We need to find away to make it harder to incentivise corruption.
Companies will only care about short term rewards. I’m for companies having the freedom do their own business but with regulation for society. Before FDA, compaines didn’t care about food safety/quality. Mixing flour with dangerous fillers to make it whiter/cheaper to increase profits. Selling spoiled meat from who knows what cut. Putting organ meat in a jar and calling it prime ground beef. There came a famous book called “the jungle” about this.
Next in the u. s. a we need to get drug prices negotiated and regulated so it doesn’t cost 10x what they sell in other countries just so they can make a profit but if someone can’t afford it they die. Then health insurance needs to be less complicated so it’s not just about making everyone happy but also more efficient. Over price something then when you bill insurance give them a discount as a “member benefit”. And my favorite some drug companies give a discount card to help pay for their drugs with insurance. It’s not a coupon/cash, but just to give the just the drug for free they don’t include it toward the deductsble/out of pocket maximum even though it’s technically paid for.. it’s b. s double dipping, they probably say some crap like treat everyone equal but it’s paid for who care where it comes from. Now the loophole is just to pay out of pocket on your credit credit card and get reimbursed. It makes you happy/and them happy. But it becomes complicated to submit the paperwork it they would just bill and apply as if it were cash. You wonder why u. s insurance has the highest admin costs stupid stuff like this. Insurance needs to be not associated with work only. The should give other options that providers will accept. If you don’t have a job when you probably will get free insurance which actually covers more things. Just imagine how private insurance would panic if they had to complete with public insurance that you could buy into. You have to be rich or poor. I hate how in the u. s everything is complicated and expensive. Obamacare helped a bit with regulating private insurance but doesn’t get to the root cause. Drug prices, allow people to buy into public insurance, over billing from provider. Etc. good thing is that premium are regulated, minimum essential, maximum profit, free preventation, expanded Medicaid income limit which depending on where you are is not much do cost of living.
Capitalism has many, many faults. Adam Smith was not quite as full of shit as his followers who love to quote, "the invisible hand of capitalism" automatically adjusting prices. End of 19th & beginning of 20th proved that fallacy when tycoons took over markets by striking many illegal deals. Shooting anyone involved in organized labor. The capitalists in this country, this far, have done nothing. The term communism scared the shit out pop the market manipulators in early 20th century. Every other civilized country could have an intelligent discussion and often incorporate socialism into them. Capitalists were behind making terms like socialism & communism so fear based no discussion could be had while European social democracies have given their citizens far greater choice of life style and very little abject poverty. Capitalists only want to increase margin and fight any wealth distribution. Capitalism & representatives thereof have mesmerized US into thinking it's a dirty word
What a clear, cogent and valuable to the conversation response. 😂
Definitely needs stronger checks and balances towards companies. It's gotten ridiculously out of hand. Nobody should ever be allowed to have 200 billion dollars. It's ridiculous, then those same companies price gauge and the billionaires get richer. Meanwhile everyone else suffers to afford to live.
A tesla costs about the same as a camry and it's a luxery car.
And how much do those cost again? What about Star Link? Any other companies the billionaire owns? What about the things behind the scenes that Elon is associated with along with Bezos that makes them obscene amounts of money which has an effect on all of us working class people?
So what? A Tesla lasts for 2 years and a Camry lasts for 20. You don't have to spend $5,000 to replace the battery in a Camry. You might also want to research working conditions at Tesla plants and within the company.
I've heard the tesla employees are about like Amazon employees as far as being treated poorly.
Ehhh I don't know. Maybe.
The question of will the tesla last 20 years is kinda a non issue because it will definitely last longest than the lease and at least here in NJ, even poor people don't really buy cars anymore.
Working conditions, he compensates them pretty good. I know 3 people that work for the corperate side and I gathered years ago it's for people who believe in the company and care that they're getting stock and are trying to move up in the company.
Which is kinda what I think most people who read the interviews from the factory workers would think.
Jeff bezos I'll hop on the hatorade train right alongside you because at least musk gives you the option do you want to work overnight. Odds are if you're working that hard, you'll eventually be working right next to him.
Bezos won't even let you use the bathroom.
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If capitalism is SO great, why do the top 10% of the wage earners in the USA control 70% of the total wealth? Why does the top 1% control half of that total wealth?
The wealthy, who control the media, have conditioned the masses to believe "Capitalism good, anything else bad". If you dare speak out about the evils of capitalism, you're branded a socialist, communist, un-American, traitor, etc. But the FACT is, greedy capitalists have put us in this position today, and continue to do so.
The system is fucked because the hearts and souls of the men running it are corrupt.
We're in this situation because people stopped seeing it as their responsibility to question the mainstream news. The average person has an extremely childish understanding of politics.
You and me probably have less understanding about how banking in this country works than a farmer from 1890. Which is fucking scary.
the thing is we need to trade goods cause nobody can produce everything they need themself. and it is in the nature of ressources (be it money or goods) that they will naturally allocate in few hands. that's a natural distribution law that re-occurs everywhere in nature and no matter what sort of distribution system we end up using to exchange goods and services, we will have that issue.
and the problem of that is that it will crash periodically, cause at some point enough people don't have enough to the point where their only option is to take a last ditch effort to kill or disown the rich. to reset the distribution. that is not a problem exclusive to capitalism but it is very easily obvious in capitalism cause money is an easy quantitative value to measure.
I'm a hard core capitalist and very strongly believe in it's benefits. It's been a resounding success.
Some of the problems we've seen are not because we have too much capitalism, but because we don't have enough.
"lobbying. "
"corruption"
Neither of these things have anything to do with capitalism.
They have everything to do with capitalism.
My favorite example being when LG lobbied to outlaw incandescent light bulbs after they had figured out LED light bulb technology before everyone else.
They timed everything perfectly, as soon as their warehouses were almost at full stock, they had a law passed which made their much of their competitors inventory illegal to sell.
Amazon is having the FAA rewrite aviation laws so that there can be deticated airspace for their drones. Your flights have to fly higher now not because they got together with politicians and decided what would be best for the country, they bribed officials until the skies became regulated the Amazon way.
Capitalism specifically relies on a low corruption, low lobbying power government
For every lobbyist, there is a lobbyist on the other side. The large majority of what lobbyists do is counter other lobbyists.
Even if a capitalist company uses it for their own means, lobbying itself has nothing to do with capitalism. It's an important, even necessary, part of government. The government could not function properly without lobbyists.
If you think that's not true of non-capitalist systems, you'd be wrong.
The anti-capitalists conveniently ignore the massive benefits of capitalism.
LG...
You greatly exaggerate what happened. It was a very long process that everyone benefited from. The switch to LEDs was probably a good idea. It's hard to claim corruption when the government comes up with a good idea with great benefits.
Amazon...
So? Amazon presented a case, and the FAA agreed with it. So what?
There are probably hundreds of things that YOU use and benefit from that might not exist if companies had not lobbied the government to change rules.
The government laws and regulations have to adapt to the times. Otherwise we'd be living in the past with far less than we have now. They adapt to the times because somebody brings it to their attention. You can't claim any kind of corruption because of that. You can't claim corruption unless there was actually corruption. Lobbying itself is not corruption, and it's NECESSARY.
You would NOT be here on GaG without capitalism. You would not be here on GaG without lobbying. You wouldn't be using and benefiting from a lot of other things either.
You're conflating capitalism with lobbying. They're two different things. I understand that lobbying has done a lot of good. Namely in enviromentalism. But if you think lobbying is anything other than a well networked guy helping people facilitate bribes then you're just not ready for this conversation. And yes, I know multiple lobbiests who's families are extremely established in politics/capitalism.
It's legalized bribary. You take someone out for dinner, tell them what you want to do, show them how you're going to "sell it" so that it's legal and digestible to the public and then a few stocks nobody is supposed to know about are discussed, maybe the guy gets to meet someone who has a job for them, maybe they get Jeffery epstein phone number.
"You're conflating capitalism with lobbying. "
You are the one doing that.
"They're two different things. "
Which is exactly what I said.
You still have not presented any argument that this is somehow unique to capitalism.
I mean, if you're just going to try to CNN me right now I don't really see the point. You said something very stupid, I told you why it was stupid and now you're trying to act like you're making the same point as me?
What am I missing here? Lmao
Well, maybe it's total miscommunication.
"You're conflating capitalism with lobbying. "
"You are the one doing that."
Your original question contained four sentences. You linked capitalism, lobbying and corruption. I was not the one linking them, you were.
Everything I've been saying is that they are separate things. They can exist together, but they can also exist apart.
Capitalism can exist with or without lobbying, and vice versa.
Capitalism can exist with or without corruption, and vice versa.
Lobbying can exist with or without corruption, and vice versa.
They are three separate things that exist with or without the other.
""They're two different things. "
Which is exactly what I said."
It's what I've been saying all along. It's what I'm saying in this post as well.
Lol so then what are you arguing for? I still don't think you understand what the question is about.
I'm saying that capitalism isn't working to the best of its ability because lobbyists take control over laws.
When coke cola can send a well connected person to members of congress and (as a made up example) say "we want to keep making soda with corn syrup instead of real sugar here's $200,000 let us know if you need anything else"
That's a problem 😂
Regardless of whatever economic system or form of government you have, you cannot evade the population's responsibility to hold the government accountable. All forms of government and all organizations eventually become corrupt and you have to be willing to get your hands dirty and fix it.
"Crony capitalism" isn't capitalism- what we need is more of the free market, which would prevent a lot of the corruption, and much of rest can be taken care of by enforcing existing laws, e. g., in antitrust. Some ethics legislation and enforcement would also be necessary.
Honestly, I think we could do pretty good with all the same corruption if we just attacked these huge companies that should have been broken up years ago.
Capitalism and free markets are good. The unholy alliance of a corrupt government and corporatism is evil. Government power should be slashed so that there's less incentive by corporations to bribe them.
I'm not American, I'm an Aussie. I'm a monarchist socialist. I love the Australian monarchy (same person physically as UK/England) and i love voting left wing. Though I haven't always voted left wing and I still like my ex politician who is not quite leftie or maybe deep down is yet rarely publicly says lol
Monarchy works amazingly well when the guy in charge cares. It usually goes down hill after the second or third leader though...
I didn't know that about Australia they must have been doing it for a while right? Why do you think it works there?
Constitutional monarchy. It's a figurehead
Like a king?
I think term limits would be a big step in the right direction,
I always wondered about how people would feel if after your second term, you need to win by a larger margin to stay. Like your third term you need to win by 20% then your 4th by 35% etc
12 years sounds fair
What we have now is not pure capitalism. The government is constantly tipping the scale. The other factor is humans. Human nature will drive every individual person to do what they can to avoid any control that they don't like. It is complicated but it is better and the failed economic models that people think they can make work. An example is communism. Communism is antithetical to human nature and will always fail. Socialism will always fail, also for similar reasons.
Fixing the corruption caused by Capitalism involves an overhaul of the entire system that is cost and time prohibitive. Bribery is at an all-time high in the US, particularly bribery of influential politicians by industries and wealthy individuals. Capitalism is a doomed economic system that progressively concentrates more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The end result according to a lot of history is armed revolution.
Capitalism is like democracy- the worst of all possible systems- except for all the others that have been tried.
But corrupting and lobbying are by definition independent of it.
Oh don't worry, I'll get back to that guy
Churchill?
Laissez-faire capitalism is the root of worldwide evil as these buccaneers play off workers of different backgrounds as they further enrich themselves and bribe corrupt politicians to do their bidding.
I'm pro-capitalist
The genocide and wealth confiscations on the other side are utterly unviable
I'm very much a free-market capitalist. I don't like tariffs, gov imposed price floors or price ceilings, ethanol mandates, corporate welfare, farm subsidies, energy subsides for renewables or fossil fuels, etc.
Capitalism needs to go the way of all religions and be purged from existence entirely.
lobbying isn't inherenlty bad.
capitalism is fine as it stands.
You're not wrong but if you knew how lobbying is used every day you would change your stance a bit
Would I? I guess Iranians like you have this "scoping" engagement. lobbying isn't inherently wrong, and yes it cn be abused. and? do you know that citizens giving petitions to politicians is lobbying? Oh i forgot I'm "judging you" hahaha. sorry, i don't know you. and i never got any non-existent "memo" of how you should be engaged with.
What do you think this major overhaul should look like?
I'm not totally sure. In an imaginary world, we would get rid of everyone at once and hold vote new people in based on their reputation amongst regular people but that would be a disaster irl lol.
Maybe politicians shouldn't be allowed financial privacy unless it's very specific circumstances handled through a type of licensed accountant. That way it's easier to see who's paying them for what.
Maybe they should be required to get a certain number of votes and if they don't, their electoral power is added onto someone who did. Then if the public feels they want someone else in, that election could be organized without having to wait.
These are just ideas off the top of my head. Maybe it's time we all start thinking about this stuff
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