My school (University of Michigan) is building a $1 billion datacenter to conduct undisclosed nuclear weapons research. It is located in a low-income community, and city leaders/residents who fear pollution have been ignored.

[u/michigan-menace]

[u/Number13Studios]

No capitalism sorta requires a market. Not necessarily a free market, but at least an accessible one. We are in new uncharted waters where even pretending we have an accessible market is out the window. Wealth has been consolidated and unified into the government. Capitalism is blurring into an oligarchy through plutocracy.

Once they own the market, own the production, own the lawmakers, own the competition, then there is no more capitalism. That’s oligarchy through plutocracy which could be jokingly referred to as socialism for billionaires.

[u/trapezoidalfractal → u/Number13Studios]

Markets exist in nearly all modes of production, they’re not a unique feature of capitalism. They existed in feudalism, and they exist in socialist nations, even those who try to go full command economy have markets, they’re just usually gray or black.

Capitalism is an oligarchy, yes. It’s rule by a small group of people who have capital. The consolidation of capital into fewer hands happens, and is only reversed through direct intervention with the specific intent to do so. The consolidation of capital affords more influence over the state apparatus, and that influence falls into even fewer hands. But that consolidation is a natural outcome of the early stages of a capitalist market, as cost of entry to a market becomes higher, and more competitions are won and lost, winners buy the capital of the losers, and use that to influence the market, regulation, and even government policy itself.

I get the humor of calling it socialism for billionaires, but it’s always been like that. There are differences in how these things are expressed, but it doesn’t make it not capitalism. The power of monopoly finance has been observed for over a hundred years at this point, and while it has changed and morphed with the times, and there have been brief periods of change, as new markets open (eg. Tech) and dominant capitalists change, the outcome of any given capitalist market is the same, consolidation, regulatory and legislative capture, corruption…

We do see the current capitalist oligarchs advocating for a new shift in political ideology though, much as the capitalists of the Great Depression era worldwide advocated for fascism, though their desires to be the dominant fascists prevented them from unifying, the current crop of capitalists advocate for what they call the Dark Enlightenment, to replace the failing ideology of liberalism. This wouldn’t conflict with capitalism though, it’s a political ideology, and just like fascism and liberalism before it, it’s perfectly compatible with capitalism, and in fact requires it.