this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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See, the problem with publicly traded corporations is, they've got to constantly not only be making as much money this year as they did the previous year, but they've got to increase shareholder value, which means, raising prices, or reducing the product to save costs, we have termed that last bit enshitification. I mean, they don't HAVE to, but if they choose not to, the board of directors will push for a change in CSUITE personnel, and those fuckers are raking in the big bucks, and really really like their 3rd vacation homes in Aspen, so you pay more, or you get less, and sometimes you pay more AND you get less. And the beat goes on.
I don't see what would be wrong with a world where businesses just satisfied themselves with providing employees with a reasonable living, contributed to the communities they were in, and provided a good or service that was needed. Sitting under a tree and reading a book sounds better than watching the world burn in your name-brand clothes and 5 bedroom 2.5 bath house.
That sir, is communism. And we all learned from 80s action movies that communism is bad.
In the real world, communism also suffered from the mandated growth problem, as well as a long list of other issues that some people still like to pretend solely exist under capitalism and some serious problems that are exclusive to this system. Yes, it is actually bad, with and without Cold War propaganda making it sound both worse and better than it actually was. It failed everywhere for a reason.
This doesn't mean that there aren't real issues with capitalism as well. So far, the best system we've come up with as a species is heavily regulated capitalism with strong social safety nets. Not perfect, but nothing is on this rock.
And for quite a lot of human history the best system we had come up with was Feudalism, until we started doing something better.
Just because Capitalism is the best we've come up with so far doesn't mean we should just accept it, or that 1000 years from now people won't look at the Capitalism with the same disdain we look at Feudalism.
There's a reason I said "so far". I'm open to the idea that there might be newer and better systems in the future. So far though, they haven't been invented yet.