[ok2938]

My problem is, I'm kind of anti-capitalist, to make it short. Labor and capital and not just production factors, but they constitute a power relationship (and often a quite asymmetric one).

I cannot bring myself to "invest" in something or believe that "my money works for me" - that's delusional. Money does not "work".

People get all upset about the stance, but all I am saying is that everyone wants to profit off someone else' work and I do not think that's the best way forward. Especially not in an era, where labor overall will decrease in value (we will continue to automate more and more) - which just means poverty for anyone w/o capital (it's that simple).

Edit: Also, I'm not speaking as a "loser" of this system - but on track to the first million - it's just that I can imagine another world and so many people take the "capitalist framework" as a given - which it just not is. There are ways to think about society in a more nuanced way, without losing all the competitive niceties of capitalism.

[someguy321]

You have an explicit choice to either not invest or invest. If you spend all your money instead of investing it, you're still making somebody work for you- they're immediately being made (although I'd disagree with this portrayal that it's involuntary, you may not) to serve you a plate of lunch or manufacture a new car for you.

Your attitude seems to be financially masochistic to me and possibly a way to justify your own actions.

[brianwawok]

So if you don't invest, do you just save money in a savings account? Over a 50 year career S&P Index Fund vs stuff in a savings account is the different between... having 20k a year to pull from savings, vs having 100k a year to pull from investments. It's a pretty stark portfolio difference.

[throwaway894345]

Ironically if you put the money in a savings account, someone much richer than you is going to be investing it on your behalf and taking the lion's share of the interest that you're leaving on the table.

[brianwawok]

Right. Can't really escape the game.

[300bps]

Imagine a community of elderly people who are physically incapable of cutting their lawn on a weekly basis.

A neighbor sees their predicament and thinks if he could only buy a lawn tractor he could help them out. But he doesn’t have the money.

So he borrows the money at 5% interest, buys the tractor and offers to cut their lawns at a low rate. He uses the money he makes from his customers to pay the payments on the tractor and even reinvests some of that to buy a truck with a plow so he can plow their driveways when it snows.

He’s happy, his customers are happy, the bank that loaned him the money is happy. It seems like putting “money to work” in this way seems like a good thing to me but maybe I’m missing something.

[robertlagrant]

> Money does not "work".

This seems an overly literal diversion from the point of that phrase.

[_k9eq]

Unless your opposition to capitalism is based on idealistic notions of morality, you have to accept that it is the predominant mode of production that society involuntarily finds itself in. Marx was financed by Engels, a factory owner and capitalist, and if he had refused to do so on principle, he would have probably never gotten around to write any of his theory (regardless of what one things of it).

Money disassociates social relations under capitalism. You fear wanting to pay people to work for you, but they too just work for the money. There is nothing ethical or unethical about that, it is just how the structure of capitalism influences the production and reproduction of society.

You might want to study theory or history, engage in labour actions, teach, help the needy, etc. but the system doesn't privilege anyone unconditionally. To have the opportunities to do what you find important, you need the resources: education, money and also time.

So it is up to you, to live by the standards of an ideal society or to exploit the current circumstances as best you can.

[ok2938]

Yes, true - many societies are using this configuration for hundreds of years.

My issue is not based on morality, but on the fact that we as humans are capable of reflecting on our existence. And that each of our lives is determined by a large amount of luck.

I could be born smart, ill, rich, poor and so on. Does some accidental property give me more rights and opportunities than others? My western net worth would allow me to retire right now in many parts of the world - but did I earn this privilege? Of course not, it was pure accident.

My issue is that people take a huge amount of lucky accidents as a justification of all kinds of power grabs and entitlements. And capitalism just has the potential to magnify this effect - e.g. by letting the "smart" and "lucky" control the "less smart" and "less lucky" and call it all "natural" and without alternative.

[throwaway894345]

Virtually no one likes inequality, but we really really don't want mass poverty, starvation, disease, etc that accompany alternative systems. Capitalism is how we minimize for poverty by tolerating some acceptable degree of inequality (it's a tricky but necessary calibration endeavor).

[jaybe1234]

Capitalism by it's nature is exploitative. You work for me and I pay you less than your labor is worth so I make a profit. It's a system built on greed and profit and is most certainly unethical.

The system privileges the top unconditionally. Think what you want, but let's not pretend that capitalism is an ethical system where the laborer isn't exploited.

[_k9eq]

Exploitation is not an ethical question, it is necessary for societies that a discrepancy exists between the value of labour invested and the value of the return. Otherwise you'd have a society where only those who work would be rewarded, and the ill, the elderly and children would get nothing.

Capitalism doesn't require greed, in the abstract it is just a condition whereby some must sell their labour and others have to buy it. In practice, there are of course a number of issues when production revolved about value accumulation, and it breaks down when the reproduction of society on a material level becomes unprofitable.

Capitalism is the rule by Capital, the impersonal forces that emerge from the structures based on the wage-labour relation. Capitalists, insofar they still exist, are (well-treated) servants, but they have no autonomy and are not rulers. Some stand to gain more than others, naturally, but the need to moralize capitalism is the consequence of weak theory, not something inherent to the system.

[splistud]

Clear away the clutter. Are you able to sell things for more money than you bought them for and still honor your personal values? If you can, then do so.

Forget the slogans, descriptions and tortured analysis. Can you as a human sell things to another human for more than you paid for them in a situation where you are both happy with the price?

If so, do so. If not, I suggest you take a look at what is motivating your feelings.

[throwaway894345]

> Can you as a human sell things to another human for more than you paid for them in a situation where you are both happy with the price?

I would be really interested to understand how someone can exchange a good for someone else's labor (which is what you're describing above) but they can't invest--which is merely paying someone's wage in exchange for a share of the profits. In both cases the participants in the exchange find the agreement to be mutually enriching, so it's not like either is particularly inherently exploitative.

[ok2938]

Yes, that's fine - I'm doing that.

My goal is simple: try not to make things worse.

[aidenn0]

Given that if you don't invest, someone else will (and get marginally higher returns on average), consider investing and donating all of the returns to a labor organization?

I'm not an expert on ethics, but it seems that the captured excess productivity is liberated from the worker regardless of whether you invest or not and if you donate 100% of your profits to labor organizations, you are merely redistributing the money back.

[throwaway894345]

Your investment pays someone's wage, and in exchange for your investment you get interest. This doesn't seem exploitative at all, and moreover I don't know of any economic system that has the ability to minimize poverty and maximize human rights than capitalism.

[Scalestein]

As a fellow anti-capitalist I struggle with how to live in a clearly capitalist world. I'm currently on track to retire at an average age or earlier and cynically view it as buying freedom from the system. In reality it reminds me of the old company store at coal mines. Paying workers in currency which can only be spent at their own store.

Breaking out of the capitalist cycle seems quite difficult to do while still maintaining a decent quality of life.

[throwaway894345]

I don't understand anti-capitalism. I get that it sucks to work to provide oneself with "a decent quality of life", but the whole point of capitalism is to minimize the amount of work one needs in order to secure that "decent quality of life". I.e., capitalism is the most efficient system we've found to secure a decent quality of life for as many people as possible.

The laws of nature require that food, shelter, and healthcare require the labor of some people and apart from slavery those people need to be compensated for the fruits of their labor. In order for each of us to share in the fruits of their labor, we have to have something with which to compensate them, which is ultimately our own labor.

It feels like anti-capitalists believe there is some forest of money trees that the capitalists are sadistically preventing anyone from accessing.

[ok2938]

I see capitalism as a good system in the sense that it does not require any belief in anything - that's certainly a plus.

What is bad is that I capital can just work and earn money, those not lucky need to be creative and actually use and sell their abilities.

Also bad: while there is competition, there is just a huge amount of excess and waste work because everybody is determined to out-compete the others.

In the end, a capitalist company aims for perpetual growth and monopoly, because that's where you can set your price and maximize your profit.

[throwaway894345]

> What is bad is that I capital can just work and earn money, those not lucky need to be creative and actually use and sell their abilities.

Yeah, inequality is a bummer, but it's a small price to pay to lift billions out of abject poverty. Further, we can do more to calibrate our capitalist systems to be more efficient which is to say we can reduce the amount of inequality and lift more people further out of poverty. That said, capitalism has allowed many of us have been able to lift ourselves out of the labor class and to begin to earn passive income even if it hasn't allowed all of society to do so in perfect lock-step. It's a centuries-long process (7+ billion people distributed through a lot of different cultures and political systems with varying degrees of corruption especially among the non-capitalist systems), but we can get there.

> Also bad: while there is competition, there is just a huge amount of excess and waste work because everybody is determined to out-compete the others

Far less than any other system known to man.

> In the end, a capitalist company aims for perpetual growth and monopoly, because that's where you can set your price and maximize your profit.

Our system largely marshals this corporate greed to the benefit of all of society. Many of us believe it can be marshaled more efficiently (i.e., less inequality and less poverty, probably by steeper taxes on the rich), but we're talking about calibrating the existing system--not changing to a fundamentally different one. Indeed, we haven't found an alternative to capitalism that isn't utterly catastrophic, so complaining about capitalism seems horribly destructive (by all means, complain about the degree to which our system could be made more efficient, but complaining that capitalism is responsible for the constraints imposed by nature is ultimately counterproductive).

[kansface]

> Breaking out of the capitalist cycle seems quite difficult to do while still maintaining a decent quality of life.

I would suggest that's because its capitalism that provides that quality of life.

[_k9eq]

I am not interested in descending into an idealogical argument here, but most (serious) anti-capitalist criticisms will acknowledge that capitalism has brought the hitherto highest quality of life, just that it is self-constrained by the necessity to produce for profit.

Socialism is then understood as the overcoming of this constraint, but as always if you ask n socialists/communists you get m answers, where m > n.

It is messy and tiresome to discuss, especially when everyone insists that their personal understandings of what terms mean are the only real ones. More so when you've heard every position a dozen times already...

[throwaway894345]

> it is self-constrained by the necessity to produce for profit

That's a constraint imposed by nature, not by capitalism. Capitalism tries to optimize the amount of profit per unit labor so as to elevate society out of poverty.

[throwaway894345]

Indeed, it seems like the parent thinks that if it weren't for capitalism no one would need to work for their food, shelter, healthcare, etc. When in reality "in order to have basic necessities one must labor" is a natural law and capitalism seeks to minimize the amount of labor required to achieve that decent quality of life. Further, the parent describes himself as participating in capitalism precisely because it is the easiest way to achieve his "decent quality of life".

This seems like the fundamental misunderstanding that anti-capitalists make--everyone wants to minimize the labor required to achieve a decent quality of life, but anti-capitalists uniquely (seem to) believe that capitalism is the reason we have to labor in the first place.

[tryingtogetback]

"anti-capitalist" - how does one become an "anti-capitalist" when it's abundantly clear that, even though it's not a perfect system, it's the best system there is? It's the system that facilitates competition, social progress, scientific advancements etc etc

I'm thinking "anti-capitalist" attitude is usually a result of the poor decisions in early adulthood (decisions regarding education, reproduction, career, social circles). When these choices don't pay off, failure to recognize that and self-correct early enough builds resentment. Since the system doesn't reward poor decisions (works as designed) it's very common to shift the blame from yourself (your incapability to adjust, adapt, improvise, and overcome) onto the system and characterize it as "exploitative"

[dragonwriter]

> “anti-capitalist” - how does one become an “anti-capitalist” when it’s abundantly clear that, even though it’s not a perfect system, it’s the best system there is?

Uh, its not “abundantly clear” that its the best system there is, which is why it was mostly thrown out in the mid-20th Century in favor of the modern mixed economy, which mitigate its harms with elements of socialism that are hostile to the basic property relationships underlying capitalism, and the major subsequent debates in the developed world have been largely about fine tuning the balance of capitalist and socialist elements of the modern mixed economy; there is a strongly pro-actual-capitalism faction in modern developed world (e.g., adherents to Austrian school ideological economics), and they are naturally popular among the disproportionately powerful, but they aren’t the consensus, any more than the faction that thinks that the problem with the mixed economy status quo is retaining capitalist elements (the anti-capitalist faction) is.

[ok2938]

Let me ask you, why aren't more workers "happy capitalists" and praise this way of living? Why aren't the warehouse workers more happy? Or the people soon displaced by computers and algorithms? Why aren't they look forward to a life of less chore and more free time?

Why do so many people protest against climate change? Why is it ok for corporations to externalize costs? Why is all the considered good?

I'm all for competition and fierce fights, but let just not forget that we live in a "society" and not in a box, everyone for themselves.

[tryingtogetback]

> why aren't more workers "happy capitalists"

Only idiots are always happy. If we see flaws, no matter how small, we try to proceed to the next level by fixing those, there is a brief moment of perceived happiness, but it passes rather quickly, and so cycle continues. What you described is Work-In-Progress. Capitalism is the system that allows that, it allows itself to self-correct.

> Or the people soon displaced by computers and algorithms

Everything that can be automated - should be automated. Humans is a creative reserve that is limited, physical labor needs to become obsolete. Also you don't see any horse carriage operators complaining about being displaced by automotive industry, do you?

> let just not forget that we live in a "society" and not in a box, everyone for themselves

That's right, everyone is not against you, they are just for themselves.

[dragonwriter]

> why aren’t more workers “happy capitalists”

Uh, because capitalists are literally a different class within capitalist society than workers; from top to bottom:

capitalists (haut bourgeoisie)

middle class (petit bourgeoisie)

workers (proleteriat)

underclass (lumpenproletariat)

You might as well ask, of feudal society, why more serfs aren’t “happy aristocrats”.

Capitalism is the best system possible…for people who are both (1) part of the capitalist class, (2) concerned primarily with their own relative position within society.

[throwaway894345]

> Let me ask you, why aren't more workers "happy capitalists" and praise this way of living?

Many are. The others don't understand economics, i.e., they don't understand that capitalism minimizes the amount of work required to meet their needs/desires, not least of all because of the sheer amount of misinformation.

[dragonwriter]

If you mean “subscribe to the ideology of the Austrian school” when you say “understand economics”, the above makes some sense.

[throwaway894345]

I was quite clear about what I meant:

> they don't understand that capitalism minimizes the amount of work required to meet their needs/desires

Anyone who thinks this is merely "ideology"--that there are non-capitalist systems that afford better quality of life for less labor--is invited to support their position with evidence.

[dragonwriter]

> Anyone who thinks this is merely “ideology”--that there are non-capitalist systems that afford better quality of life for less labor–is invited to support their position with evidence.

The evidence is the replacement of the system originally named “capitalism” by its critics, under pressure from its critics, throughout the developed world by the modern mixed economy in the decades of the mid-20th Century, with the modern mixed economy, which afforded the working masses a better quality of life for less labor directly by restraining the property relationships defining capitalism.

The question isn’t whether you can do better in terms of quality of life for workers with less labor than capitalism, the question is whether there is a limit to how far you can move away from capitalism while continuing to improve on that.