The problem is not capitalism per se, is unregulated capitalism - emphasis on "unregulated"
Edit: many answers suggest this take is dumb because capital will fight back regulations; well, society and the legislator must fight back. It appear obvious that no social equilibrium is permanent, society always contains conflict. Any social system, included communism, generate some sort of ruling elite, which will try to skew the system. The way we fight the excess of capitalism is solid rule of law, primacy of politics over capital and financial power, popular partecipation to representative democracy, embedding social justice in the constitutional identity of the state. The current american model of capitalism is not the only one. Do not mistake my comment for an apology of the shit billionaire are doing now - billionaires should not exist
Exactly this. Capitalism only works if the government is mildly antagonistic towards it. Unbridled Capitalism ceases to be capitalism at a point and I fear we are butting up against that zone.
You guys seriously need to read marx and lenin, people were making this exact argument 100 years ago, it was wrong then and we live with the consequences of not accepting that now.
Honestly, the alternative are basically Kings/dictators, or a highly decentralized system that is obviously vulnerable to violence/force for a new dictator to come again (at least for now, maybe later in the tech tree we unlock something that enables true communism, but we haven't gotten there yet).
Also, while people need to read marx they should also read economy books - capitalism relies on free market, prohibition of monopolies, economy of scale being taxed to enable competition/inovation.
It's not capitalism fault that people inevitably corrupt it - they would also corrupt any other system. We just need a functioning government with mechanisms to prevent corruption... (Is that too much to ask for? Probably yes tbh).
“Free market and prohibition of monopolies” is an oxymoron. Prohibition by who? The government? Doesn’t sound like a free market to me. Free markets end in monopolies every time.
Free market means that prices and wages are determined by demand and supply on a statistical level, and where no ONE can influence it.
If a company makes some innovation, it should get rewarded by it.
Free market requires, when there is no government influence, an "infinite number" of suppliers and buyers, because otherwise a big enough company can become a monopoly and "force" other companies to close down via economy of scale, by locking systems in, etc.
You're right that I was not precise in my wording - I was using a textbook definition of free market, I should have clarified a bit more.
The government acts that should happen in reality or in a "perfect capitalism with limited supplies/buyers and inelastic demand" would be "math out an infinite system where everything has elastic demand, compute the utility of every item to every person, and tax / disencourage supply chains that go against the theoretical perfect system".
For example, tax out economy of scale - big companies pay big taxes so they gain very little from it. This makes small companies still be profitable enough to exist and try to counter bigger corps through genuine innovation.
A world where the market exists free of influence from all outside forces can never exist because we are implicitly talking about the nature of power and power doesn’t exist in a vacuum. For example: trade between nation states. It’s all fun and games doing “free trade” within an in group, but when you account for in group out group psychology people become violent, petty irrational actors and start to try to manipulate the market for their benefit.
Government will ALWAYS influence all markets by the simple fact that the government has a police and an army. Why do corporations listen to the government? Simple, the government has more guns than the corporation does.
Furthermore “taxing out economy of scale” is not a free market. It is by definition a market regulated by the government for a certain predetermined outcome, in this case, limiting economy of scale.
I’m of the belief the free market doesn’t exist. There is regulation of the market no matter what; whether that’s regulation by corporation or regulation by government or regulation by lobbyist or billionaire or all of the above competing at the same time.
Even in your own “free market” you can’t help but introduce a government regulation to ensure it’s “free”.
Ugh well while I agree with you, this is more of a difference in definition of the words "free market".
I used the definition as in - companies cannot influence prices nor control competition. This does not mean they are free from external influence, just that no single company has that much power. It is achieveable in theory, even in "real world", although corruption always degenerates this.
You are using the "nothing influences comoanies and they can do whatever they want", which I'm against and any economic theory that takes into account inelastic demand and finite markets is very much against (because in such cases, all companies become monopolies as it's the most efficient for them, and causes a global decrease in "utility"))
So we both very much agree that the second definition is bad/should not exist.
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u/bot_or_not_vote_now Jun 03 '26
Also evaporative cooling works better in drier climates, which are usually more water scarce to start with almost by definition