Insurance (am American)
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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competition. You like Brand A? and dislike Brand B? both are owned by C
"Disposable" electronics
Full time work.
Social media
Homeopathy?
Printer inkt. In our shop people are still buying them for a way to high priceβ¦
Bank fees
I see you have no money... I'm going to have to charge you for that
Religion. The all-time champion, no contest, just as George Carlin said:
Landlording
401k
Rent
Paying for cellular data, in advance, regardless of whether or not you use it with no possibility of refunding any you didn't use.
Commoditized bottled water.
Giving money to politicians.
I agree with this so much. Political parties should just be given one tv ad and one pamphlet. Only allowed to talk about their own policies and nothing else. Exclusively government funded. Any extra donations and you're no longer representing the people's interests so you're murdered or something idk.
Individualism.
Massage school. They say theyβre teaching you a trade and will help with job placement but there is a glut of graduates and not enough jobs for them. Yet the school keeps signing up new students because thatβs how they make money.
Capitalism and religion, easily the top two scams.
capitalism
The scam that has passed the test of time. So scamming good, that even communists turn to it!
Which communists? The USSR was infiltrated and the US then spent millions getting the bumbling mass of ethanol known as Yeltsin to win an election. They (the new capitalist government) even sieged the parliament building and sent tanks in Moscow to disperse the huge waves of protestors. It then lead to one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the modern age almost overnight.
And in China they are assuredly not capitalist, this becomes very clear once you read Deng Xiaoping. It's Schroedinger's China: when they do something bad they're communists, and when they do something good (like lifting people out of poverty) they're capitalists.
Cuba is still socialist, DPRK is still socialist, Vietnam is also reforming and opening up kinda like China did but a bit differently so still socialist
Are we really denying that the "Chinese Characteristics" of the PRC's "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is Capitalism? Btw, I think the good parts of China are the socialism bits.
capitalism is not bits and pieces here and there, it's an entire mode of production with its own base and superstructure. In that sense China can't be called capitalist. At best we could say it has "capitalist elements" but even then that's a stretch when getting down into the details of what these elements actually are.
I mean, some (most? Idk) of the means of production are owned by the state (ostensibly a proxy for the people, I'd rather it was more direct but the government has consistently high approval so I'll give it a pass) and those are clearly socialistic.
But there are certainly factories and what not owned by capitalists, and as that accounts for much of the production that goes on in China, and as these products are not destined to serve the public weal but rather to be sent abroad as bits and bobs to be sold and promptly thrown away as serves global capital, I really don't get the desire to not call this capitalism.
China, to me, has a very clear mixed economy with elements of both socialism and capitalism.
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