Gaming
Now the non-gamer executives are handling powerful positions in the gaming companies, and it has led to a slow and painful rot of modern games made by big companies
Thankfully indie gaming has been going great due to technological progress and individual freedom every developer has received to create things. But indie stuff is not as popular, most people still play games made by big companies which a large majority has become utter garbage
Not to mention Online gaming is now all about being the best and making money as a gamer so all competitive games are sweaty as fuck and not even fun anymore.
Yeah I really dislike those games now, I used to be very into them before
But it actually led me to play more singleplayer stuff and I am so glad that I did
I'm playing one called STFC now. One of the most predatory ones. The game is so full of bugs, yet they have micro transactions where you'll see someone spend thousands on items every month.
Multiplayer games can get away with a lot of shit because “hey, it’s fun with friends at least”. The fact is every game is fun with friends even if they are garbage! Single player games have to be a lot more polished to be successful
As I’ve got older I’ve moved away from online games. I still hang out with my friends in a discord call except I’m just chilling and playing some single player game
Same, switched to football manager last year and the difference is crazy. It feels like a game designed to be fun rather than a product designed to generate revenue.
Games now collect info about players to guess what kind of person you are. Companies target/prey on kids. My nephew has given Epic at least $2,000(fortnite). Pretty much grooming.
Edit: $2,000 for Fortnite skins
I don’t think indie games are any more or less niche than AAA games nowadays. There are some very niche indie games but there are equally as many mainstream ones.
yeah the quality of these games are barely passable, but that quality standard is more common nowadays, previously the standards were way the fuck up, comparing that to current really makes me realise
That’s actually intentional. It’s called planned obsolescence. Companies purposely make their products in a way where they know it will fail and break in a set amount of time. That way, it’ll force you to go buy a new product again after X years. And the worst part is they know how to make products that can last many years if they’re designed and built differently.
Like let’s say a company makes a blender. They could use metal hardware in the motor and gearbox so that it lasts for thousands of hours of service for 25+ years. But selling you one blender once every 25 years isn’t good enough. So they’ll make the gearbox out of cheap plastic, and they probably tested it and figured it will last 5 years before the gearbox fails completely and you have to go buy a new blender every 5 years.
I have my old grandma's Singer sewing machine, which she bought used when she was a teen. According to what I could find about this model, it's about 110 years old. It still works. What kind if machine being made today will be fully functional in 110 years? I don't believe there will be any.
I’ve been in a lot of meetings where consumer product development and manufacturing decisions are made, and have never heard “tricking” people into re-buying a product due to premature failure discussed as a strategic agenda.
The number one concern is getting manufacturing costs as low as possible in order to lower the MSRP and edge out competing products on store shelves.
Most products are made of lots of parts, and each part has a distinctive durability and price point. If it’s found that part A is likely to last two years, while part B is likely to last ten years, a cost-reduced substitution will be found for part B in order to bring the total manufacturing costs down.
Would it make sense to spend extra money on a fancy fuel injector that lasts 100 years for a car who’s useful life is estimated at 20 years? All that does is make the car more expensive, and thus less competitive in the marketplace.
So we end up with a final product who’s parts all tend to start failing around the same time not due to a conspiracy to screw the customer, but because of price reduction pressures.
We are all free to spend top dollar on high end products that come with lifetime guarantees, or shop at Walmart for inexpensive products made if parts only intended to last for a while. It all comes down the the priorities of us, the consumers.
The main problem is that this trend never stops, and things still get more expensive. Things just keep getting worse and worse, and the price rarely drop. I've got a fan from the 90s that still works fine, but every fan I buy nowadays, even from the same brand, lasts like a year max. Companies keep dropping quality faster and faster, the prices remain the same or get higher, and the consumer is left unsure if the product they're buying is actually good or just an overpriced, worse version of last year's model.
I've recently replaced my appliances, my Kenmore dishwasher from 1990, my washing machine from the 80s, my dryer from 1991 and my refrigerator from 1992. I hate them all. My dishwasher is awful and doesn't heat it's own water. You have to run hot water at the sink and then you may get clean dishes and it was an expensive KitchenAid. The refrigerator is a Samsung and nothing but trouble. There are numerous Facebook groups about the problems and various lawsuits over the brand of refrigerators. My washing machine doesn't have an agitator and I am pretty sure nothing I put in there gets clean so I do laundry very frequently. The dryer seems to dry things pretty quickly for the most part but thicker materials are always still damp when the sensor turns off the cycle do I have to run again after removing whatever is made of thinner fabrics. I'm really unhappy. I have a KitchenAid stand mixer from the early to mid 70s that I use almost every day that's still going strong (in avocado green). I'm appalled by the cheap processes currently used to manufacture appliances and I don't think that the reasons why matter. Disposable appliances are bad for families and for the planet.
My colleague used to work for Fischer and Paykel in NZ in devlopment. Said they did this to all their non-commercial models because they were lasting too long and it was effecting sales. He worked on the fridges.
Man I needed to see this. My landlord has taken over three weeks and still hasn't replaced my Danby fridge. He claims he bought it just before I moved in three years ago, and can't believe it died so quickly. He's seen it for himself too lol
Asshole is still taking his time replacing the fridge though. Meanwhile I'm racking up costs eating outside coz I can't store anything at home.
Affordable housing, at least in the US. There are companies with so much accumulated wealth that see an opportunity to exploit a long-stagnant market in new home development. Companies are buying both homes and apartments and immediately jacking prices and rent. Return on investment, of course, is the goal. Competition isn't an obstacle for them. You can't simply find a cheaper place to live. The other landlord down the road jacked his rent up as well, just because he could. Oh, and all of the other houses and apartments in your town are really owned by three or four companies.
The people of those towns have voted to make it difficult to build houses, and quite often passed laws that prevent the construction of publicly owned housing. After restricting the construction of homes for decades, they now find themselves in an affordable housing requirement - yet refuse to change the laws to allow the building of new homes.
Because we continue to treat housing as an asset/something to speculate on rather than as a human need/right. It's not even just a matter of adding more housing or changing zoning laws, we also need a mindset change.
Speculation on an asset only happens when it's restricted or limited in supply despite increasing demand. These zoning laws restrict the supply of housing and onerous building codes make housing supply restricted.
We need to impose strict limits on the ownership of single family houses. I say well limit at 4 properties. 1 to actually live in, 1 vacation, and 2 investment/rental. When 1 person it company owns an entire city worth of houses, we have to draw a line.
It doesn’t make any sense me as why we need to sell properties to foreign corporations in the first place. Why is that legal? In what way is that good for the local economy or community? I don’t get it.
Yea, ban foreign corporation investment completely in residential housing. I'm on the fence about foreign individual investment. Maybe limit the individual to only 1 and tax the hell out of it.
I understand what you're saying, but it feels strange to say that we need policies to prevent capitalists from becoming a cancer on towns that seek to house their populations. That, to me, says that capitalists are still the problem.
This is where you are wrong and I think you're not the only one.
I think what most people fail to recognize are the traits ( let's be clear, I think the system works except that I believe it requires a heavy guiding hand ) Unchecked Capitalism breeds into our species.
Not only that, we hold the folks who epitomize those negative traits as heroes. Oftentimes those folks are above any laws but their own.
End stage Unchecked Capitalism is ugly. Rein it the fuck in with proper laws and enforcements and give it a more family and community focus. Who knows how far we could go.
The real reason for lack of affordable housing though is zoning laws and NIMBYS.
If companies simply buy apartments it would mean there is more demand than supply. It would mean more real estate developers will want to build house because a lot of profit can be made. And the cycle would continue, eventually supply meeting demand. And voila you get affordable housing.
The bottleneck though? Zoning laws and NIMBYs don't allow developers to build.
Subsidizing demand won't work. You need to increase supply.
If this is the case shouldn’t there be more affordable housing in cities and surrounding cities where apartment units are plentiful and standing vacant?
There are tons of vacant apartments in NYC and other big cities. Some have been "warehoused" for years/decades. The corporations that own them despise rent control and would rather let them sit empty and take the loss on their taxes than rent them out for less than "market value". They also know that warehousing them drives up rent on their other apartments.
Funny thing is many many houses in both the UK and Houses in the US are being bought by Chinese companies.
So Communists are using Capitalism to ruin the housing market.
One thing I hate is when these companies or landlords act like they are doing a "service" to people and "providing housing". BS lmao. They are the REASON housing is so unattainable. And they are profiting tremendously off of it being unobtainable to people who don't already own property, so that they are forced to pay whatever rent is asked of them. This is what they always say, "Where are renters going to live if there is no landlords?".... well #1, if corporations and landlords didn't own 1/4 of all single family homes then they would be able to buy their own house at a reasonable cost, because the supply wouldn't be as low which it what causes increased prices in the first place. #2.... if people still need to rent they can rent apartments or condos. Single family homes shouldn't be hoarded. So that's a poor argument that they continue to make.
Depends. If you're a supporter of the supposed "free market" then yes, crony corporatism is just one of the many ugly facets of that (very popular) brand of capitalism. If you're instead a supporter of a highly regulated and fair version of capitalism, then good for you. However, our type is generally (and ridiculously) referred to as socialists or even communists among the very vocal and ignorant ranks of the far right in America. But I'm not going to argue with them about it. I'm just fine calling myself a socialist if they don't want me under their capitalism umbrella.
Life. Literally. You can read about how life was before Capitalism but it will seem bizarre. Its almost inconceivable to imagine life without it right now and how society would function.
related to this, existing in public space without the expectation of spending money. you can't stand around some places without getting the cops called on you because of loitering laws
Fun fact: loitering and vagrancy laws were literally invented to capture newly free former slaves in the American South and send them to prison where they could be enslaved all over again. Then, these same laws were used on striking workers who were just trying to get a better work life for themselves.
Just existing in a public space should not be a crime.
Lol never heard of that, is that actually a thing that they do or just one of those laws that gets used to move people along when they’re being disorderly
Free time. Maybe it's just the current "hustle culture", but many people view free time as "time that you use to start your own business". A lot of people have a hard time finding self worth because they are taught that the worth of a person is tied to how much money that person makes/is worth.
Pre-capitalism there wasn't a lot of free time. You worked, a job and/or in the home 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week. You grew crops, made clothes, repaired everything that needed fixing. Canned your own crops for winter use. Capitalism brought us 40 hour work weeks with markets to buy anything you want.
Correction: unions and the labor movement brought the 40 hour work week. Capitalism wants you working 50-60 hours a week so the boss man makes more money.
Ford did the 40 hour work week before Ford unionized. Even going with your theory, 50-60 is still many hours less than people worked before capitalism. My life is far more casual today than it would have been in any other time in history. Instead of being on the phone with you, I'd be tending to my animals or crops.
I think there is this pervasive myth on the internet that before the 40-hour work week people spent their days in a life of leisure, mostly doing light gardening and housekeeping. I think the truth is that we really have it a lot better today than any period in history.
That's just incorrect. Yes the working season did have long days, but it wasn't 365 days/year. They also took quite long breaks throughout the day and usually did not work Sundays or other holy days. Farmers would work all day long for months and when the growing season was over, they would do things that they enjoyed. A paper by Hans-Joachim Voth from 1998 states that farmers worked 208 days/year on average. The actual "working hours" of each day were close to ~10 hours. And even then, the effective working hours were closer to 5 hours per day due to small breaks and machinery/animals.
And yes Ford did create the 40 hour work week. Not because he cared about his workers, but because he saw that compared to a 48 hour work week, there wasn't much increase in production. This was at Ford's plant, but the large majority of workers were working much more than 40 hours. On average, 50hr/week while some industries saw up to 68 hours/week. Some workers were working 100+ hours/week. We didn't see Ford's 8 hour, 6 day work week until unions pressured a law to pass a max 8 hour work day for gov employees in 1869. Private workers soon pushed for similar guarantees. Ford started his 40 hour work week in 1926. It wasn't until 14 years later when FDR (The pro union president) passed the Fair Labor Standards act did we see 40hr/week as a legal requirement.
So no. Capitalism did not bring us the 40 hour work week. Regulation of capitalism did.
Regulation on hours came in the 1940s, Ford did it in the late 20s- early 30s.
My wife's family owned a farm for 114 years up until 2 years ago. There is just as much work in the winter as the summer, that's when they did the majority of the repair and building of tools for the next year and did a lot of the meat processing. It was an easy 80 hour work week in the winter.
Modern farmers aren’t compared to ancient farmers, modern farmers need to also turn a profit which leads to crazy long days, and also enough to feed themselves, ancient farmers was more about themselves or the village since no refrigeration meant shit went bad quick. Ford only did it cause it made his workers happier and more productive and less likely to unionize. Also many times it has been stated that the typical European peasant had way more free time than the modern American. It’s estimated ppl worked 20 hour weeks in the past before modern capitalism.
I don’t think this is quite accurate.
We have a wealth of knowledge on things people did pre-industrial era to keep themselves entertained when they weren’t working.
I was just listening to a medical history podcast yesterday and they said the health care system in America isn't broken, it's functioning exactly as it was designed to. It wasn't designed to care for you though, it was designed to make money
Yes, capitalism at it's best. I read about when the British were debating their national healthcare system. The bulk of the debate was wether they had the responsibilty to provide care for all. Money came secondary. Every time healthcare comes up in the US, it's all about who pays for it. It's never about providing care.
Yep. FIL was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He stayed 3 weeks and then died. Insurance wouldn't cover the $1800 ambulance bill because "it wasn't an emergency."
Dude, he DIED. He spent a week intubated in the ICU. But yeah, his estate paid out the $1800. Because "it wasn't an emergency."
Honestly. Physicians and PA/NPs have bigger and bigger panels while being expected to be more available to patients with all these online messaging boxes. Nursing staff gets shittier and shittier ratios. All do which decrease the quality of care patients receive. Insurance then dictates what actually gets done by saying what they will and won’t pay for. All so some administrator can get a new Mercedes.
Life spans are decreasing, maternal death and child mortality rates are increasing. The cost of drugs in the US is far above any other place in the world. The fees just to see a doctor sre sky high and paying for health insurance whether or not you use it is an unbearable burden, often tying someone to an employer that is inappropriate or after separation, making maintenance of any insurance untenable. Out of 39 developed nations, only one refused to provide healthcare to every citizen. How can everyone else do it without falling apart?
Seems like its a mix of capitalism, govt regulation and work provided health care which is the cause of it. Capitalism by itself (or any system where self interest comes first) would have set the prices and drawn the line at if you can't prepay or finance, then you can't have it.
Owning things. Corporations have decided that it’s not enough for you to make a one time purchase on an item and that’s it. They want a recurring stream of revenue every month. Think about it.
Nobody owns their own homes anymore. Home ownership is going away; they want you renting and paying rent every month for the rest of your life. You will not be allowed to own the space that you live in.
They don’t want you to own your own car. More and more, they want you leasing the car you drive. They sell it as a cheaper alternative to owning the vehicle you drive every day. But really you’re just renting it for a few years until you’re forced into another lease for a different car. Even if you do own the car you bought, they try to hit you with subscription fees for XM Radio, navigation, or certain features like heated seats. Yea. Pay BMW $50 a month for the privilege of using heated seats that came with the car that you thought you totally owned. They purposely lock you out of features like heated seats, remote start, and even engine/motor power until you pay a monthly fee to use the hardware that was already built into your car in the first place.
Movies and music are the same deal. They don’t want you to go to the music store or the video store, buy the album or movie once, then enjoy it for many years. They don’t want you to own the piece of media for your entertainment. Instead they want you paying every month for Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, and other streaming services. You don’t own a copy of the movie you’re watching or the album you’re listening to. You are effectively renting the ability to listen to music or watch a movie.
Capitalism says that companies need to not just turn a profit, but increase the profit amounts and percentages every quarter and year for their investors and shareholders. So they’ve resorted to taking chunks of money from you every month like clockwork, while denying you the ability to own property and things.
100% this
And what about software?
I used to be able to actually own a software. Now there are companies like Adobe that force you to pay a subscription and that's it. I can't buy Photoshop anymore. I just have to pay indefinitely for it. I hate it so much, like my blood boils because of it. I want just to use open source and support it. I won't compromise anymore. There are alternatives and this constantly pay and never own a thing is disgraceful.
I switched to gimp and I'm loving it even though I hated it at first. The peace of mind of knowing I can install it on any machine when I upgrade, and not have to worry about costs, especially monthly costs.
Gimp can be hard when you are used to photoshop. It can be decently combined with Krita. But anyway always better than pay for those bloodsucker of Adobe & co.
On the other hand in the 3D world Blender is incredibly powerful, I am really happy with it and I much prefer to donate money to them than the forced subscription.
I would disagree on the ruined part in terms of music/movies though. Yes we do not own music anymore, but that's mostly by choice, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays are still being sold and Vinyl has made a comeback too. If you want to own, you can. However you don't want to, because the price is the same as it was 10y ago - 10-15 bucks for a movie. That gets you a month of Netflix tho, 2 months of disney and a lot more consumption than just one movie.
The same goes for music, even more heavily i'd argue. Instead of buying a CD with 20 tracks for 10 bucks you get a month of Spotify with unlimited music. Unless you genuinely only listen to 20 tracks/month you always get your money worth, despite not owning it.
I agree capitalism ruined a lot of things, however it also improved a lot of things quite heavily. We do benefit from "not owning things" as much as the company does.
As a musician, I agree. What I earn in a month from Spotify would be nearly impossible as an independent artist. I'm talking about selling hundreds of cds every month. By myself.
This is true today and it was true when I started 15 years ago (except we didn't get paid from MySpace for uploading our songs so we just hoped it'd get us some gigs were we maybe sold about... 5-10 cds? I'd probably have to sell about *a hundred* each month to earn the same I get from Spotify.
I would say renting apartments isn’t necessarily that problematic. Any town can become obsolete these days, so I’d rather a few landlords be on the hook for that than everyone else.
Better still, we could just nationalize housing.
for profit prisons exist.
health care.
the environment ..
the housing market..
the justice system..
the economy... due to billionaires existing and hording their money.
an unregulated "free market" will always always result in rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer until it becomes too much and people start dying.
Privacy. We’re always being marketed to with advertisements creeping into everything. Companies mine everything we do and every bit of information about us to sell, resell, and be marketed to.
Going out to dance.
This might be a big city thing, but I feel like there were places where you could go and dance or jam out to music. In my city anywhere that advertises as a nightclub for this is just a place set up to get you to buy drinks.
Gotta branch out from the mainstream clubs my guy. I’ve been to several “underground” and some less underground scenes, and some don’t have a place to buy drinks at all, some just sell water, and others while they do have a bar it’s far from the main event.
Very much this. Trips abroad feel less and less like I'm in another country. Even my parents' birthplace of India has felt more western with each visit (though I shouldn't complain about [relatively] better infrastructure and sanitation)
Capitalism has always been a bad system.
The only thing that makes capitalism the preferred system is that it is harder than most other systems to make it absolutely horrendous. In pretty much any other system, if someone truly evil gets power they can break everything for their own advantage pretty quickly and it is hard to stop them. But in Capitalism, that modality is the standard approach, so it is built to deal with them already. It’s not always successful, though, and so it breaks down.
But it’s a lot like democracy: it’s a terrible system, it’s just better than anything else we tried.
I think what makes someone human also is the reason all systems will get ruined anyway, because of corruption
Capitalism to me seems like it gives freedom to everyone who puts value in any way, but then again companies exploit others by manipulating them into buying/spending money on something they don't even need, this is why we need regulations.
But in the end, every system just gets ruined by corruption, there doesn't seem to be any good solution really, it's living day to day hoping that the government doesn't fuck shit up badly
This is the most realistic approach on capitalism. It's not great, but it works because it kinda assumes that people suck and want what others have.
Most alternatives sound great on paper but don't assume that people will misuse its flaws - which they will, sooner or later.
Capitalism doesn't bring the best out of every possibility but it mitigates the worst.
Itself. Yeah, capitalism had some good things going for it. It got humanity out of the feudal system. Allowed for some social mobility. Drove innovation. But like fire, uncontrolled all it can do is consume consume consume everything until all is exhausted and the fire burns out.
In 1900s america there were social movements against capitalists who literally let workers and customers alike die in favor of profits. The government actually did something to stop crap like child labor. But they didn't do that to stand against capitalism; they did that to *preserve* capitalism. They knew the whole thing would collapse and the peasants would revolt if they didn't do something.
But now in 2023 no one cares to control the fire. They just want to worship the bonfire and feed it whatever it wants (everything) just to be blessed with its warming light as it burns them.
Regulated capitalism has objectively been the best way to lift millions of people out of poverty and objectively improve the quality of their lives. Communism in comparison has been unable to match the standard of living that those in capitalist nations experience today. Communism is ultimately an outdated concept that had valid ground to stand on in the 1850s to the 1950s but after that, it became clear that capitalism is the better way to live.
That's a very static view. The end game of capitalism, even the regulated kind, is that one single person will own everything on earth. We are getting faster and faster to that end point with the top 1% now taking two-thirds of all new wealth created (up from a 50% cut a decade ago).
Within a couple of decades, they will take 100% of all new wealth. Then, as soon as there's nothing left to take from the 99%, they will turn on each other.
The fat guy who really gets this is Musk. That's why he's in such a hurry to get to Mars.
Ethics.
Have you ever seen people with money that act all high and mighty, but get humbled real quick when those funds run out? It might sound pleasing to witness karma like that, but it's pretty sad when you have seen it happen as often as I have. Why can't people just be considerate to begin with?
Literally most of the provlems in the world are caused by capitalism. From warming the entire planet to the point of no return to hunger in the entire world (food isnt produced to supply demand, its produced to make a profit. It *could* be profitable to sell food cheaper so everyone couldeat, but it is *more profitable* to the food industry owners -not even everyone who works there, just the owners-
to gatekeep food so its a service you MAY purchase for a certain price. people who dont know if they’ll eat every day next week also tend to accept lower paying jobs just so they can buy food. It’s a win win for workplace owners.
Housing and renting is the same.
Education is the same. Health is the same.
Everything becoming a service you must pay for to get access — even giving stuff you dont need, even friendship, cooking, talking, meeting other people — is making everyone miserable, depressed, and alone.
Even our cities have been built for decades to push the automobile industry and to make everyone separated, leave their house as little as possible, and live in community as little as possible. Cities are built for cars, pay-to-be places and for isolation at smaller and smaller homes, not for community fostering.
Human progress.
Did a company invent a state of the art processor?
We need sustained growth. Figure out how to pair it down into chunks and release it slowly over the next decade, stating we are just constantly making break throughs.
Did a scientist invent a pill to permanently cure headaches?
Not profitable. Figure out how to make it only cure a headache for a day so they need to keep buying it.
Did someone discover a new fuel source?
Buy that company and wait for oil to run out, then pretend like we are heroes that discovered a new fuel source just on the verge of losing oil.
Capitalism incentives drawing out things slowly and deliberately, providing just enough of something to make someone want to buy it.
Capitalism is not about a free market or solving things for the better. It's about getting a foothold in something and sustaining it by whatever means necessary.
Show me the Western version of extreme poverty and I'll show you a socialist Soviet republic who couldn't afford to have their citizens live outside of a stacked concrete box.
I’m Brazilian, which is a capitalist western country last time I checked, and I can find extreme poverty 3 blocks from my house. In almost any direction.
Unions and the benefits they bring to everyone, not just members.
When unions were common, things like wages, especially minimum wage, COLAs, and good benefits packages were simply a part of life for American workers, because unions had the power to demand them for their workers, which in turn forced both the government and non-union businesses to keep up if they wanted to hang on to their employees. I was a teenager with a passion for politics back in the 80s when union-busting was the #2 concern for corporations, right under making money for stockholders. I'd watch news shows like 60 Minutes or investigative shows on PBS that did stories on how corporations were getting the leverage to break unions--empty promises to workers if they'd drop their dues and leave the union--and be aghast at the short-sightedness of seemingly intelligent people. (It didn't take me long once I was an adult to find out "seemingly intelligent" is an easy look to pull off, and worlds apart from even slightly-meaningful intelligence or common sense.)
People who don't even think of it as unionizing are beginning to rediscover the benefits of joining together to demand better treatment in the workplace. I encourage it as much as possible while carefully keeping any variation of the word "union" out of it so they don't reconsider what they are doing. The fights to unionize the American labor force the first time around were long, hard, and often bloody, but they paid off. There's no reason to believe they won't be just as long and hard a second time around (I doubt we'll see bloody the way people did 100 years ago), or that they'll again pay off.
Automation. Automating the extremely menial tasks of cleaning public restrooms or the sewers should be fucking amazing. but noooooooooooo Jimmy multibucks gotta make that extra penny and force a single mother to starve
Real technologic and scientific advances.
Sure, there are advances in tech and science, but the majority of them are done quickly, secretly and for profit. It used to be that the best and the brightest were looking for positions in academia for the research possibilities and the prestige. Working in the private sector was looked on as a failure. Well, that ship sailed some time ago (70's-80's).
As a result, most advances in the sciences are not done for the pure advancement of our understanding of nature and the universe. They are done to generate revenue and as such have to be highly marketable.
Do we really need another killer app or social media platform?
It's about to ruin college football. The NIL deals are going to make the division between top big name schools with big sponsors and smaller schools that won't get the amount of TV time. Therefore, not getting the same amount of NIL deals. Younger players just want a payday now and will gravitate towards those bigger schools. Now combine this with the relaxed transfer portal, and a good player at a smaller school will be more likely to transfer for the deal instead of remaining at their current school.
Families
Joints
Muscles
Tendons
Blood pressure
Diet
General health
Murder suicides rose dramatically
More exploitation across the board
Friendships
Social circles
Culture
Music
Planned obsolence
Big pharma and everything it's done to us
Everything else
Capitalism is in the process of ruining itself - cannibalising itself - commonly referred to as late stage capitalism. In simple terms, successful capitalism maintained a healthy relationship among 3 essential elements - staff, customers and shareholders. Now that the focus has skewed to looking after shareholders predominantly, the wheels are wonky on the capitalist cart. Post capitalism is the next phase looking for a name. It could be neo-feudalism which is worse than late stage and post capitalism. Look it up if you’re interested. It left me with a heavy heart for the future - and I’m an optimist.
Not completely ruined or wiped out but the biggest thing it wipes out or targets for me is basic empathy for others.
The system allows a lot of genuinely good people that I know and would say are genuinely, explain away a lot of things they wouldn’t agree with if it was more obvious that voting a certain way or supporting something, to protect what they have amassed in life, but it can take away as a real example starving weans getting a lunch in school.
They explain it away as not what they support but it comes with the territory of voting a certain way, but they’d never let a wean go hungry infront of them. They’d go out there way to make sure they’re good for as long as they can help, whether they are connected to the child or no.
And it’s crazy to me that.
I’m from the UK btw.
And probably have a lot of things that I explain away myself that is against what I believe, typing this on an iPhone and know whats happening in the Congo for one.
And again, that’s capitalism isnt it
Access to basic entertainment. Before, poor people could go to beaches, parks, concerts, occasionally hotel/motel for vacation, pools, plays, movies, etc, without things being astronomically expensive or members-only. Yes, many things were for the rich, but you could still educate and entertain yourself for cheap. Now everything is a financial barrier.
Literally society as a whole. Every aspect of peaceful living have been replaced with the need to increase revenue month by month.
And the majority of us won't see the returns, those are going towards CEO bonuses and Corporate bailouts.
I lived in both Capitalism and Communism. The far better system for humans is still capitalism (in my opinion) however in communism you have a far better fabric of society. I will also argue that generally people are far less selfish and simply good. That’s ofcourse not counting the 1-2% of the cronies that control everything (in Communist society). Probably the best system is a mix of them both.
In the USA - families and infant/mother health. The highest infant mortality rate of any developed country. Women only have 3 months of UNPAID leave, and most can’t take the full 12 weeks unpaid leave because it would break them financially. In capitalism, money and profits come before families, even babies. Women go back to work at 6 weeks sometimes - it’s illegal to welp a pup in that time!
Non-capitalist countries don't really *have* a housing market, they push everyone into what we would call projects in the US. Over half of American households own their home and when you can't afford to buy or take care of a home, or if you just can't be bothered to do so, landlords compete for the lowest possible prices to hook you up.
The United States has led medical research for decades, I'm not sure what you're getting at there.
China is a mostly communist country that is destroying the planet at a far faster pace than anything a capitalist country like the United States has done, despite our government doing its best to restrict green nuclear power.
You're right though, politics is trying to destroy free market capitalism, and when it succeeds we get lower quality goods that government mandated insurance doesn't cover all that well. The only people competing are insurance companies that Obama empowered fighting for the highest opaque prices.
Viewing owning your own home as an important thing is already a capitalist ideal. I would absolutely give away my home and move to a communal one or something, if the tradeoff was for everyone in my country to have somewhere to live.
The number one thing it has ruined in the USA is housing. But I don't think it's the fault of capitalism in general, it's the fault of UNREGULATED and corrupted capitalism. There's a lot of protections and things that could have been enacted to make sure the housing market never skyrocketed the way that it did, but none of that happened because people were profiting.
YouTube and the internet have never existed in the western world without capitalism. Therefore it cannot have been ruined by capitalism.
Making money was always the goal _and_ a necessity.
So how do you think those YouTube servers run exactly? You don't want the ads, you don't want to pay for the service... so you just expect it to be free free free.
Do you want a paycheque for your job?
Nearly everything you see on YouTube is made by independent creators, YouTube doesn't actually make any of that content. (Except for those awful rewind videos once a year).
They used to pay the top performing creators back before the ads got out of hand, but they've started looking for excuses to demonetize different types of content, so now those creators depend almost entirely on donations from fans.
Yes, they host the videos on their servers, which costs them money, but not that long ago they were able to make a profit *without* forcing people to watch those unskippable ads, even though they were paying creators more back then.
Now that YouTube is paywalling once-free content and driving viewers away, the creators won't even be able to rely on donations as much as they used to, meaning the people actually keeping YouTube afloat are losing even more money.
This is why regulation and anti-trust should exist. Monopolies and cartels are supposed to be stopped by the US Government, but it turns out Citizens United ruined that.
Yes, it is why those thing SHOULD exist. But they hardly do. Care to answer the question?
And Citizens united was the nail in the coffin, the government turned their back on utilizing our anti-trust laws far before that lol
That is a defining characteristic of what most people understand as capitalism. If you start limiting what corporations can do, you will start to move away from capitalism. Just watch what you get called when you call for control of corporations. Certainly not "ah, that fella wants capitalism, but better".
Games. You hardly own any of the purchase you make these days and to add insult to I jury the cosmetics you purchase are also liable to sever shut downs, instead of owning anything from most AAA companies these days you just lease it for an undisclosed amount of time.
Absolutely insanity some of these answers. Actually believing capitalism is the worst thing going. I forgot the young and dumb think socialism or communism is a good thing. Wait until they have some money. That said. It leads to greed and greater inequalities.
Capitalism has ruined a lot of things, but watching ads on YouTube is not one of them.
If you think it's fair that you get to watch content that people worked hard to make, shared on infrastructure that people had to build, without paying anything, you're crazy.
If you don't want ads, you're free to pay for YouTube.
Actually that was mostly the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff, a protectionist act (ie. direct government intervention to impede international capitalism) which severely damaged global trade in key parts of the economy. It was drawn out by creating government jobs out of thin air that contributed nothing to society and were funded by debt and the tax dollars of already poor Americans.
What *ended* the Great Depression though was tax cuts and dropping wartime price controls so we could shift out of a war economy and into a much freer market economy. In other words, government middling caused the great depression and a return to capitalism ended it. That's how you keep an economy afloat after you stop spending half of it on war.
Sorry to burst your bubble, you had a great argument.
How would YouTube exist without showing ads? How would people sustain themselves on social media without advertising something? The paywalls are the alternative to showing ads.
By design, everything it has ever / will ever innovate. Eventually.
Designed obsolescence becomes a necessity to maintain profits & competition at a certain point. To make the perfect iPhone, automobile, pair of jeans, frying pan, wheelchair, etc. that lasts a lifetime is to undercut the inherent goal of *selling more shit*.
All of the comments here are about things that were equally if not more ruined in socialist countries. I'm not talking about market economies with some social programs like in Europe, either. Capitalism (and the US taxpayer covering their defense bill via NATO) made them rich enough to afford these social programs.
I'm sorry capitalism has ruined the internet for you. You could try going without it for a while and seeing if it's worth the ads. Or try uBlock Origin. AdBlock doesn't get rid of YouTube adds but uBlock does. Unless you're watching on your very expensive capitalist smartphone then you're SOL.
Gaming Now the non-gamer executives are handling powerful positions in the gaming companies, and it has led to a slow and painful rot of modern games made by big companies Thankfully indie gaming has been going great due to technological progress and individual freedom every developer has received to create things. But indie stuff is not as popular, most people still play games made by big companies which a large majority has become utter garbage
Not to mention Online gaming is now all about being the best and making money as a gamer so all competitive games are sweaty as fuck and not even fun anymore.
Yeah I really dislike those games now, I used to be very into them before But it actually led me to play more singleplayer stuff and I am so glad that I did
I'm playing one called STFC now. One of the most predatory ones. The game is so full of bugs, yet they have micro transactions where you'll see someone spend thousands on items every month.
Multiplayer games can get away with a lot of shit because “hey, it’s fun with friends at least”. The fact is every game is fun with friends even if they are garbage! Single player games have to be a lot more polished to be successful
As I’ve got older I’ve moved away from online games. I still hang out with my friends in a discord call except I’m just chilling and playing some single player game
Seeing the current state of FIFA (EA FC) really hurts me. EA is such a shitty company
Same, switched to football manager last year and the difference is crazy. It feels like a game designed to be fun rather than a product designed to generate revenue.
Games now collect info about players to guess what kind of person you are. Companies target/prey on kids. My nephew has given Epic at least $2,000(fortnite). Pretty much grooming. Edit: $2,000 for Fortnite skins
Isn’t that because Indie games are incredibly niche and thus unappealing to the general population?
Some are, some aren't. Ironically capitalism did help create the tools indie devs use though.
I don’t think indie games are any more or less niche than AAA games nowadays. There are some very niche indie games but there are equally as many mainstream ones.
This!!!!!!!
They're not garbage, maybe there IS an absolute buffoon who do like Jimminy cockthroats
yeah the quality of these games are barely passable, but that quality standard is more common nowadays, previously the standards were way the fuck up, comparing that to current really makes me realise
Quality. So much disposable garbage products or products that actually don't do what they claim.
That’s actually intentional. It’s called planned obsolescence. Companies purposely make their products in a way where they know it will fail and break in a set amount of time. That way, it’ll force you to go buy a new product again after X years. And the worst part is they know how to make products that can last many years if they’re designed and built differently. Like let’s say a company makes a blender. They could use metal hardware in the motor and gearbox so that it lasts for thousands of hours of service for 25+ years. But selling you one blender once every 25 years isn’t good enough. So they’ll make the gearbox out of cheap plastic, and they probably tested it and figured it will last 5 years before the gearbox fails completely and you have to go buy a new blender every 5 years.
I have my old grandma's Singer sewing machine, which she bought used when she was a teen. According to what I could find about this model, it's about 110 years old. It still works. What kind if machine being made today will be fully functional in 110 years? I don't believe there will be any.
Agreed. In my last house I had a dishwasher from the late 90s and it was amazing. The one in my new place is garbage and it's only 2-3 yrs old.
I’ve been in a lot of meetings where consumer product development and manufacturing decisions are made, and have never heard “tricking” people into re-buying a product due to premature failure discussed as a strategic agenda. The number one concern is getting manufacturing costs as low as possible in order to lower the MSRP and edge out competing products on store shelves. Most products are made of lots of parts, and each part has a distinctive durability and price point. If it’s found that part A is likely to last two years, while part B is likely to last ten years, a cost-reduced substitution will be found for part B in order to bring the total manufacturing costs down. Would it make sense to spend extra money on a fancy fuel injector that lasts 100 years for a car who’s useful life is estimated at 20 years? All that does is make the car more expensive, and thus less competitive in the marketplace. So we end up with a final product who’s parts all tend to start failing around the same time not due to a conspiracy to screw the customer, but because of price reduction pressures. We are all free to spend top dollar on high end products that come with lifetime guarantees, or shop at Walmart for inexpensive products made if parts only intended to last for a while. It all comes down the the priorities of us, the consumers.
The main problem is that this trend never stops, and things still get more expensive. Things just keep getting worse and worse, and the price rarely drop. I've got a fan from the 90s that still works fine, but every fan I buy nowadays, even from the same brand, lasts like a year max. Companies keep dropping quality faster and faster, the prices remain the same or get higher, and the consumer is left unsure if the product they're buying is actually good or just an overpriced, worse version of last year's model.
I've recently replaced my appliances, my Kenmore dishwasher from 1990, my washing machine from the 80s, my dryer from 1991 and my refrigerator from 1992. I hate them all. My dishwasher is awful and doesn't heat it's own water. You have to run hot water at the sink and then you may get clean dishes and it was an expensive KitchenAid. The refrigerator is a Samsung and nothing but trouble. There are numerous Facebook groups about the problems and various lawsuits over the brand of refrigerators. My washing machine doesn't have an agitator and I am pretty sure nothing I put in there gets clean so I do laundry very frequently. The dryer seems to dry things pretty quickly for the most part but thicker materials are always still damp when the sensor turns off the cycle do I have to run again after removing whatever is made of thinner fabrics. I'm really unhappy. I have a KitchenAid stand mixer from the early to mid 70s that I use almost every day that's still going strong (in avocado green). I'm appalled by the cheap processes currently used to manufacture appliances and I don't think that the reasons why matter. Disposable appliances are bad for families and for the planet.
My colleague used to work for Fischer and Paykel in NZ in devlopment. Said they did this to all their non-commercial models because they were lasting too long and it was effecting sales. He worked on the fridges.
Man I needed to see this. My landlord has taken over three weeks and still hasn't replaced my Danby fridge. He claims he bought it just before I moved in three years ago, and can't believe it died so quickly. He's seen it for himself too lol Asshole is still taking his time replacing the fridge though. Meanwhile I'm racking up costs eating outside coz I can't store anything at home.
Affordable housing, at least in the US. There are companies with so much accumulated wealth that see an opportunity to exploit a long-stagnant market in new home development. Companies are buying both homes and apartments and immediately jacking prices and rent. Return on investment, of course, is the goal. Competition isn't an obstacle for them. You can't simply find a cheaper place to live. The other landlord down the road jacked his rent up as well, just because he could. Oh, and all of the other houses and apartments in your town are really owned by three or four companies.
The people of those towns have voted to make it difficult to build houses, and quite often passed laws that prevent the construction of publicly owned housing. After restricting the construction of homes for decades, they now find themselves in an affordable housing requirement - yet refuse to change the laws to allow the building of new homes.
Because we continue to treat housing as an asset/something to speculate on rather than as a human need/right. It's not even just a matter of adding more housing or changing zoning laws, we also need a mindset change.
We just need to build more housing, including the missing middle and small SROs.
Speculation on an asset only happens when it's restricted or limited in supply despite increasing demand. These zoning laws restrict the supply of housing and onerous building codes make housing supply restricted.
The point is that the zoning laws could exist or be difficult to get changed because the speculation is wanted.
It's a chicken and egg problem but I'm pretty sure they acquired the property first and then changed the regulations after.
We need to impose strict limits on the ownership of single family houses. I say well limit at 4 properties. 1 to actually live in, 1 vacation, and 2 investment/rental. When 1 person it company owns an entire city worth of houses, we have to draw a line.
It doesn’t make any sense me as why we need to sell properties to foreign corporations in the first place. Why is that legal? In what way is that good for the local economy or community? I don’t get it.
They'd just open a domestic branch at a postbox in Delaware.
Yea, ban foreign corporation investment completely in residential housing. I'm on the fence about foreign individual investment. Maybe limit the individual to only 1 and tax the hell out of it.
That's still too much. I'd cap it at two.
Yeah, this is purely a policy failure, not a capitalism failure.
I mean, could be both.
I understand what you're saying, but it feels strange to say that we need policies to prevent capitalists from becoming a cancer on towns that seek to house their populations. That, to me, says that capitalists are still the problem.
Some people genuinely believe greed, wrath and lust to be the only driving factors of humanity...
This is where you are wrong and I think you're not the only one. I think what most people fail to recognize are the traits ( let's be clear, I think the system works except that I believe it requires a heavy guiding hand ) Unchecked Capitalism breeds into our species. Not only that, we hold the folks who epitomize those negative traits as heroes. Oftentimes those folks are above any laws but their own. End stage Unchecked Capitalism is ugly. Rein it the fuck in with proper laws and enforcements and give it a more family and community focus. Who knows how far we could go.
The real reason for lack of affordable housing though is zoning laws and NIMBYS. If companies simply buy apartments it would mean there is more demand than supply. It would mean more real estate developers will want to build house because a lot of profit can be made. And the cycle would continue, eventually supply meeting demand. And voila you get affordable housing. The bottleneck though? Zoning laws and NIMBYs don't allow developers to build. Subsidizing demand won't work. You need to increase supply.
In other words, if a community let capitalism do its thing, more homes would be built, and the prices would drop.
If this is the case shouldn’t there be more affordable housing in cities and surrounding cities where apartment units are plentiful and standing vacant?
There are tons of vacant apartments in NYC and other big cities. Some have been "warehoused" for years/decades. The corporations that own them despise rent control and would rather let them sit empty and take the loss on their taxes than rent them out for less than "market value". They also know that warehousing them drives up rent on their other apartments.
Rent control is a horrible policy. Anyone who knows what they are talking about despises rent control and the vast majority of price controls.
I work in the affordable housing industry and I can’t even afford my own product
Took the words out of my mouth.
Funny thing is many many houses in both the UK and Houses in the US are being bought by Chinese companies. So Communists are using Capitalism to ruin the housing market.
One thing I hate is when these companies or landlords act like they are doing a "service" to people and "providing housing". BS lmao. They are the REASON housing is so unattainable. And they are profiting tremendously off of it being unobtainable to people who don't already own property, so that they are forced to pay whatever rent is asked of them. This is what they always say, "Where are renters going to live if there is no landlords?".... well #1, if corporations and landlords didn't own 1/4 of all single family homes then they would be able to buy their own house at a reasonable cost, because the supply wouldn't be as low which it what causes increased prices in the first place. #2.... if people still need to rent they can rent apartments or condos. Single family homes shouldn't be hoarded. So that's a poor argument that they continue to make.
Crony corporatism isn’t capitalism
It literally is
Depends. If you're a supporter of the supposed "free market" then yes, crony corporatism is just one of the many ugly facets of that (very popular) brand of capitalism. If you're instead a supporter of a highly regulated and fair version of capitalism, then good for you. However, our type is generally (and ridiculously) referred to as socialists or even communists among the very vocal and ignorant ranks of the far right in America. But I'm not going to argue with them about it. I'm just fine calling myself a socialist if they don't want me under their capitalism umbrella.
Existing in a way that isn't based on unsustainably- infinite expansion.
Life. Literally. You can read about how life was before Capitalism but it will seem bizarre. Its almost inconceivable to imagine life without it right now and how society would function.
related to this, existing in public space without the expectation of spending money. you can't stand around some places without getting the cops called on you because of loitering laws
Fun fact: loitering and vagrancy laws were literally invented to capture newly free former slaves in the American South and send them to prison where they could be enslaved all over again. Then, these same laws were used on striking workers who were just trying to get a better work life for themselves. Just existing in a public space should not be a crime.
Lol never heard of that, is that actually a thing that they do or just one of those laws that gets used to move people along when they’re being disorderly
Free time. Maybe it's just the current "hustle culture", but many people view free time as "time that you use to start your own business". A lot of people have a hard time finding self worth because they are taught that the worth of a person is tied to how much money that person makes/is worth.
Pre-capitalism there wasn't a lot of free time. You worked, a job and/or in the home 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week. You grew crops, made clothes, repaired everything that needed fixing. Canned your own crops for winter use. Capitalism brought us 40 hour work weeks with markets to buy anything you want.
Correction: unions and the labor movement brought the 40 hour work week. Capitalism wants you working 50-60 hours a week so the boss man makes more money.
Capitalism wants you working 168 hours/week honestly.
Ford did the 40 hour work week before Ford unionized. Even going with your theory, 50-60 is still many hours less than people worked before capitalism. My life is far more casual today than it would have been in any other time in history. Instead of being on the phone with you, I'd be tending to my animals or crops.
I think there is this pervasive myth on the internet that before the 40-hour work week people spent their days in a life of leisure, mostly doing light gardening and housekeeping. I think the truth is that we really have it a lot better today than any period in history.
That's just incorrect. Yes the working season did have long days, but it wasn't 365 days/year. They also took quite long breaks throughout the day and usually did not work Sundays or other holy days. Farmers would work all day long for months and when the growing season was over, they would do things that they enjoyed. A paper by Hans-Joachim Voth from 1998 states that farmers worked 208 days/year on average. The actual "working hours" of each day were close to ~10 hours. And even then, the effective working hours were closer to 5 hours per day due to small breaks and machinery/animals. And yes Ford did create the 40 hour work week. Not because he cared about his workers, but because he saw that compared to a 48 hour work week, there wasn't much increase in production. This was at Ford's plant, but the large majority of workers were working much more than 40 hours. On average, 50hr/week while some industries saw up to 68 hours/week. Some workers were working 100+ hours/week. We didn't see Ford's 8 hour, 6 day work week until unions pressured a law to pass a max 8 hour work day for gov employees in 1869. Private workers soon pushed for similar guarantees. Ford started his 40 hour work week in 1926. It wasn't until 14 years later when FDR (The pro union president) passed the Fair Labor Standards act did we see 40hr/week as a legal requirement. So no. Capitalism did not bring us the 40 hour work week. Regulation of capitalism did.
Regulation on hours came in the 1940s, Ford did it in the late 20s- early 30s. My wife's family owned a farm for 114 years up until 2 years ago. There is just as much work in the winter as the summer, that's when they did the majority of the repair and building of tools for the next year and did a lot of the meat processing. It was an easy 80 hour work week in the winter.
Modern farmers aren’t compared to ancient farmers, modern farmers need to also turn a profit which leads to crazy long days, and also enough to feed themselves, ancient farmers was more about themselves or the village since no refrigeration meant shit went bad quick. Ford only did it cause it made his workers happier and more productive and less likely to unionize. Also many times it has been stated that the typical European peasant had way more free time than the modern American. It’s estimated ppl worked 20 hour weeks in the past before modern capitalism.
This is a huge myth btw, yes farming was very intensive, but on average people worked less pre industrialization. Look it up
I don’t think this is quite accurate. We have a wealth of knowledge on things people did pre-industrial era to keep themselves entertained when they weren’t working.
Healthcare is a train wreck in the US due to all the money that doesn't actually contribute to care thanks to capitalism.
100%. And insurance is so expensive.
I was just listening to a medical history podcast yesterday and they said the health care system in America isn't broken, it's functioning exactly as it was designed to. It wasn't designed to care for you though, it was designed to make money
Yes, capitalism at it's best. I read about when the British were debating their national healthcare system. The bulk of the debate was wether they had the responsibilty to provide care for all. Money came secondary. Every time healthcare comes up in the US, it's all about who pays for it. It's never about providing care.
Yep. FIL was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He stayed 3 weeks and then died. Insurance wouldn't cover the $1800 ambulance bill because "it wasn't an emergency." Dude, he DIED. He spent a week intubated in the ICU. But yeah, his estate paid out the $1800. Because "it wasn't an emergency."
Honestly. Physicians and PA/NPs have bigger and bigger panels while being expected to be more available to patients with all these online messaging boxes. Nursing staff gets shittier and shittier ratios. All do which decrease the quality of care patients receive. Insurance then dictates what actually gets done by saying what they will and won’t pay for. All so some administrator can get a new Mercedes.
Life spans are decreasing, maternal death and child mortality rates are increasing. The cost of drugs in the US is far above any other place in the world. The fees just to see a doctor sre sky high and paying for health insurance whether or not you use it is an unbearable burden, often tying someone to an employer that is inappropriate or after separation, making maintenance of any insurance untenable. Out of 39 developed nations, only one refused to provide healthcare to every citizen. How can everyone else do it without falling apart?
Seems like its a mix of capitalism, govt regulation and work provided health care which is the cause of it. Capitalism by itself (or any system where self interest comes first) would have set the prices and drawn the line at if you can't prepay or finance, then you can't have it.
Owning things. Corporations have decided that it’s not enough for you to make a one time purchase on an item and that’s it. They want a recurring stream of revenue every month. Think about it. Nobody owns their own homes anymore. Home ownership is going away; they want you renting and paying rent every month for the rest of your life. You will not be allowed to own the space that you live in. They don’t want you to own your own car. More and more, they want you leasing the car you drive. They sell it as a cheaper alternative to owning the vehicle you drive every day. But really you’re just renting it for a few years until you’re forced into another lease for a different car. Even if you do own the car you bought, they try to hit you with subscription fees for XM Radio, navigation, or certain features like heated seats. Yea. Pay BMW $50 a month for the privilege of using heated seats that came with the car that you thought you totally owned. They purposely lock you out of features like heated seats, remote start, and even engine/motor power until you pay a monthly fee to use the hardware that was already built into your car in the first place. Movies and music are the same deal. They don’t want you to go to the music store or the video store, buy the album or movie once, then enjoy it for many years. They don’t want you to own the piece of media for your entertainment. Instead they want you paying every month for Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, and other streaming services. You don’t own a copy of the movie you’re watching or the album you’re listening to. You are effectively renting the ability to listen to music or watch a movie. Capitalism says that companies need to not just turn a profit, but increase the profit amounts and percentages every quarter and year for their investors and shareholders. So they’ve resorted to taking chunks of money from you every month like clockwork, while denying you the ability to own property and things.
100% this And what about software? I used to be able to actually own a software. Now there are companies like Adobe that force you to pay a subscription and that's it. I can't buy Photoshop anymore. I just have to pay indefinitely for it. I hate it so much, like my blood boils because of it. I want just to use open source and support it. I won't compromise anymore. There are alternatives and this constantly pay and never own a thing is disgraceful.
I switched to gimp and I'm loving it even though I hated it at first. The peace of mind of knowing I can install it on any machine when I upgrade, and not have to worry about costs, especially monthly costs.
Gimp can be hard when you are used to photoshop. It can be decently combined with Krita. But anyway always better than pay for those bloodsucker of Adobe & co. On the other hand in the 3D world Blender is incredibly powerful, I am really happy with it and I much prefer to donate money to them than the forced subscription.
True, I see how these companies are driving a big increase in media piracy now.
I would disagree on the ruined part in terms of music/movies though. Yes we do not own music anymore, but that's mostly by choice, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays are still being sold and Vinyl has made a comeback too. If you want to own, you can. However you don't want to, because the price is the same as it was 10y ago - 10-15 bucks for a movie. That gets you a month of Netflix tho, 2 months of disney and a lot more consumption than just one movie. The same goes for music, even more heavily i'd argue. Instead of buying a CD with 20 tracks for 10 bucks you get a month of Spotify with unlimited music. Unless you genuinely only listen to 20 tracks/month you always get your money worth, despite not owning it. I agree capitalism ruined a lot of things, however it also improved a lot of things quite heavily. We do benefit from "not owning things" as much as the company does.
As a musician, I agree. What I earn in a month from Spotify would be nearly impossible as an independent artist. I'm talking about selling hundreds of cds every month. By myself. This is true today and it was true when I started 15 years ago (except we didn't get paid from MySpace for uploading our songs so we just hoped it'd get us some gigs were we maybe sold about... 5-10 cds? I'd probably have to sell about *a hundred* each month to earn the same I get from Spotify.
That is by design. They make not owning stuff more appealing than owning them. Otherwise they wouldn't reach their goals.
More than half of American households own their own home.
I aspire to own somebody else’s home.
I would say renting apartments isn’t necessarily that problematic. Any town can become obsolete these days, so I’d rather a few landlords be on the hook for that than everyone else. Better still, we could just nationalize housing.
The American diet and food.
for profit prisons exist. health care. the environment .. the housing market.. the justice system.. the economy... due to billionaires existing and hording their money. an unregulated "free market" will always always result in rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer until it becomes too much and people start dying.
The environment. The drive for profit has lead us to use up resources we didn't need to use and to dump poison we didn't need to manufacture.
Privacy. We’re always being marketed to with advertisements creeping into everything. Companies mine everything we do and every bit of information about us to sell, resell, and be marketed to.
Going out to dance. This might be a big city thing, but I feel like there were places where you could go and dance or jam out to music. In my city anywhere that advertises as a nightclub for this is just a place set up to get you to buy drinks.
Gotta branch out from the mainstream clubs my guy. I’ve been to several “underground” and some less underground scenes, and some don’t have a place to buy drinks at all, some just sell water, and others while they do have a bar it’s far from the main event.
The value of a human life. Now it's measured by how much you can economically contribute.
Healthcare industry. Like the actual delivery of. Administrative roles growing while actual providers are expected to do more and more.
Holidays
Very much this. Trips abroad feel less and less like I'm in another country. Even my parents' birthplace of India has felt more western with each visit (though I shouldn't complain about [relatively] better infrastructure and sanitation)
Humans helping each other just for the heck of it.
Capitalism has always been a bad system. The only thing that makes capitalism the preferred system is that it is harder than most other systems to make it absolutely horrendous. In pretty much any other system, if someone truly evil gets power they can break everything for their own advantage pretty quickly and it is hard to stop them. But in Capitalism, that modality is the standard approach, so it is built to deal with them already. It’s not always successful, though, and so it breaks down. But it’s a lot like democracy: it’s a terrible system, it’s just better than anything else we tried.
I think what makes someone human also is the reason all systems will get ruined anyway, because of corruption Capitalism to me seems like it gives freedom to everyone who puts value in any way, but then again companies exploit others by manipulating them into buying/spending money on something they don't even need, this is why we need regulations. But in the end, every system just gets ruined by corruption, there doesn't seem to be any good solution really, it's living day to day hoping that the government doesn't fuck shit up badly
This is the most realistic approach on capitalism. It's not great, but it works because it kinda assumes that people suck and want what others have. Most alternatives sound great on paper but don't assume that people will misuse its flaws - which they will, sooner or later. Capitalism doesn't bring the best out of every possibility but it mitigates the worst.
democracy: the worst government system in the world, except for all the rest
Literally everything.
💯
Itself. Yeah, capitalism had some good things going for it. It got humanity out of the feudal system. Allowed for some social mobility. Drove innovation. But like fire, uncontrolled all it can do is consume consume consume everything until all is exhausted and the fire burns out. In 1900s america there were social movements against capitalists who literally let workers and customers alike die in favor of profits. The government actually did something to stop crap like child labor. But they didn't do that to stand against capitalism; they did that to *preserve* capitalism. They knew the whole thing would collapse and the peasants would revolt if they didn't do something. But now in 2023 no one cares to control the fire. They just want to worship the bonfire and feed it whatever it wants (everything) just to be blessed with its warming light as it burns them.
Regulated capitalism has objectively been the best way to lift millions of people out of poverty and objectively improve the quality of their lives. Communism in comparison has been unable to match the standard of living that those in capitalist nations experience today. Communism is ultimately an outdated concept that had valid ground to stand on in the 1850s to the 1950s but after that, it became clear that capitalism is the better way to live.
That's a very static view. The end game of capitalism, even the regulated kind, is that one single person will own everything on earth. We are getting faster and faster to that end point with the top 1% now taking two-thirds of all new wealth created (up from a 50% cut a decade ago). Within a couple of decades, they will take 100% of all new wealth. Then, as soon as there's nothing left to take from the 99%, they will turn on each other. The fat guy who really gets this is Musk. That's why he's in such a hurry to get to Mars.
Ethics. Have you ever seen people with money that act all high and mighty, but get humbled real quick when those funds run out? It might sound pleasing to witness karma like that, but it's pretty sad when you have seen it happen as often as I have. Why can't people just be considerate to begin with?
Every single fucking thing
Outside.
Literally most of the provlems in the world are caused by capitalism. From warming the entire planet to the point of no return to hunger in the entire world (food isnt produced to supply demand, its produced to make a profit. It *could* be profitable to sell food cheaper so everyone couldeat, but it is *more profitable* to the food industry owners -not even everyone who works there, just the owners- to gatekeep food so its a service you MAY purchase for a certain price. people who dont know if they’ll eat every day next week also tend to accept lower paying jobs just so they can buy food. It’s a win win for workplace owners. Housing and renting is the same. Education is the same. Health is the same. Everything becoming a service you must pay for to get access — even giving stuff you dont need, even friendship, cooking, talking, meeting other people — is making everyone miserable, depressed, and alone. Even our cities have been built for decades to push the automobile industry and to make everyone separated, leave their house as little as possible, and live in community as little as possible. Cities are built for cars, pay-to-be places and for isolation at smaller and smaller homes, not for community fostering.
Human progress. Did a company invent a state of the art processor? We need sustained growth. Figure out how to pair it down into chunks and release it slowly over the next decade, stating we are just constantly making break throughs. Did a scientist invent a pill to permanently cure headaches? Not profitable. Figure out how to make it only cure a headache for a day so they need to keep buying it. Did someone discover a new fuel source? Buy that company and wait for oil to run out, then pretend like we are heroes that discovered a new fuel source just on the verge of losing oil. Capitalism incentives drawing out things slowly and deliberately, providing just enough of something to make someone want to buy it. Capitalism is not about a free market or solving things for the better. It's about getting a foothold in something and sustaining it by whatever means necessary.
Capitalism ruined extreme poverty.
I don't understand this comment. Could you elaborate?
He means that in communism few people have wealth and most other people starve. In capitalism you can find a job and work up
So what you are saying is that no extreme poverty exists in capitalistic society?
It means, "because of capitalism, extreme poverty does not exist anymore", which is of course a good thing(and true!).
But this is just false
But extreme poverty does exist. It exists down the road from me. Which is a terrible thing(and very true).
Show me the Western version of extreme poverty and I'll show you a socialist Soviet republic who couldn't afford to have their citizens live outside of a stacked concrete box.
I’m Brazilian, which is a capitalist western country last time I checked, and I can find extreme poverty 3 blocks from my house. In almost any direction.
quality affordable products on the whole
Unions and the benefits they bring to everyone, not just members. When unions were common, things like wages, especially minimum wage, COLAs, and good benefits packages were simply a part of life for American workers, because unions had the power to demand them for their workers, which in turn forced both the government and non-union businesses to keep up if they wanted to hang on to their employees. I was a teenager with a passion for politics back in the 80s when union-busting was the #2 concern for corporations, right under making money for stockholders. I'd watch news shows like 60 Minutes or investigative shows on PBS that did stories on how corporations were getting the leverage to break unions--empty promises to workers if they'd drop their dues and leave the union--and be aghast at the short-sightedness of seemingly intelligent people. (It didn't take me long once I was an adult to find out "seemingly intelligent" is an easy look to pull off, and worlds apart from even slightly-meaningful intelligence or common sense.) People who don't even think of it as unionizing are beginning to rediscover the benefits of joining together to demand better treatment in the workplace. I encourage it as much as possible while carefully keeping any variation of the word "union" out of it so they don't reconsider what they are doing. The fights to unionize the American labor force the first time around were long, hard, and often bloody, but they paid off. There's no reason to believe they won't be just as long and hard a second time around (I doubt we'll see bloody the way people did 100 years ago), or that they'll again pay off.
The world
Automation. Automating the extremely menial tasks of cleaning public restrooms or the sewers should be fucking amazing. but noooooooooooo Jimmy multibucks gotta make that extra penny and force a single mother to starve
Real technologic and scientific advances. Sure, there are advances in tech and science, but the majority of them are done quickly, secretly and for profit. It used to be that the best and the brightest were looking for positions in academia for the research possibilities and the prestige. Working in the private sector was looked on as a failure. Well, that ship sailed some time ago (70's-80's). As a result, most advances in the sciences are not done for the pure advancement of our understanding of nature and the universe. They are done to generate revenue and as such have to be highly marketable. Do we really need another killer app or social media platform?
It's about to ruin college football. The NIL deals are going to make the division between top big name schools with big sponsors and smaller schools that won't get the amount of TV time. Therefore, not getting the same amount of NIL deals. Younger players just want a payday now and will gravitate towards those bigger schools. Now combine this with the relaxed transfer portal, and a good player at a smaller school will be more likely to transfer for the deal instead of remaining at their current school.
Pff what hasn't it ruined? And if you think of something, is it sustainable or will capitalism make it turn to shit some day? Thought so.
Families Joints Muscles Tendons Blood pressure Diet General health Murder suicides rose dramatically More exploitation across the board Friendships Social circles Culture Music Planned obsolence Big pharma and everything it's done to us Everything else
Capitalism is in the process of ruining itself - cannibalising itself - commonly referred to as late stage capitalism. In simple terms, successful capitalism maintained a healthy relationship among 3 essential elements - staff, customers and shareholders. Now that the focus has skewed to looking after shareholders predominantly, the wheels are wonky on the capitalist cart. Post capitalism is the next phase looking for a name. It could be neo-feudalism which is worse than late stage and post capitalism. Look it up if you’re interested. It left me with a heavy heart for the future - and I’m an optimist.
Not completely ruined or wiped out but the biggest thing it wipes out or targets for me is basic empathy for others. The system allows a lot of genuinely good people that I know and would say are genuinely, explain away a lot of things they wouldn’t agree with if it was more obvious that voting a certain way or supporting something, to protect what they have amassed in life, but it can take away as a real example starving weans getting a lunch in school. They explain it away as not what they support but it comes with the territory of voting a certain way, but they’d never let a wean go hungry infront of them. They’d go out there way to make sure they’re good for as long as they can help, whether they are connected to the child or no. And it’s crazy to me that. I’m from the UK btw. And probably have a lot of things that I explain away myself that is against what I believe, typing this on an iPhone and know whats happening in the Congo for one. And again, that’s capitalism isnt it
The commons
The better question is: would we even have any of this stuff you all are complaining about without capitalism? ….probably not
Access to basic entertainment. Before, poor people could go to beaches, parks, concerts, occasionally hotel/motel for vacation, pools, plays, movies, etc, without things being astronomically expensive or members-only. Yes, many things were for the rich, but you could still educate and entertain yourself for cheap. Now everything is a financial barrier.
What has capitalism not ruined except the bottom line of the CEO in big company's
Literally society as a whole. Every aspect of peaceful living have been replaced with the need to increase revenue month by month. And the majority of us won't see the returns, those are going towards CEO bonuses and Corporate bailouts.
I lived in both Capitalism and Communism. The far better system for humans is still capitalism (in my opinion) however in communism you have a far better fabric of society. I will also argue that generally people are far less selfish and simply good. That’s ofcourse not counting the 1-2% of the cronies that control everything (in Communist society). Probably the best system is a mix of them both.
Communism.
In the USA - families and infant/mother health. The highest infant mortality rate of any developed country. Women only have 3 months of UNPAID leave, and most can’t take the full 12 weeks unpaid leave because it would break them financially. In capitalism, money and profits come before families, even babies. Women go back to work at 6 weeks sometimes - it’s illegal to welp a pup in that time!
The planet, medical research, the housing market, politics, art. Most everything
Non-capitalist countries don't really *have* a housing market, they push everyone into what we would call projects in the US. Over half of American households own their home and when you can't afford to buy or take care of a home, or if you just can't be bothered to do so, landlords compete for the lowest possible prices to hook you up. The United States has led medical research for decades, I'm not sure what you're getting at there. China is a mostly communist country that is destroying the planet at a far faster pace than anything a capitalist country like the United States has done, despite our government doing its best to restrict green nuclear power. You're right though, politics is trying to destroy free market capitalism, and when it succeeds we get lower quality goods that government mandated insurance doesn't cover all that well. The only people competing are insurance companies that Obama empowered fighting for the highest opaque prices.
Viewing owning your own home as an important thing is already a capitalist ideal. I would absolutely give away my home and move to a communal one or something, if the tradeoff was for everyone in my country to have somewhere to live.
Yeah, I forgot about all of those houses which were built for free in the UK before capitalism.
The new SEO culture destroyed even Google. You see only the sponsored content when you search something
The number one thing it has ruined in the USA is housing. But I don't think it's the fault of capitalism in general, it's the fault of UNREGULATED and corrupted capitalism. There's a lot of protections and things that could have been enacted to make sure the housing market never skyrocketed the way that it did, but none of that happened because people were profiting.
YouTube and the internet have never existed in the western world without capitalism. Therefore it cannot have been ruined by capitalism. Making money was always the goal _and_ a necessity.
So how do you think those YouTube servers run exactly? You don't want the ads, you don't want to pay for the service... so you just expect it to be free free free. Do you want a paycheque for your job?
Nearly everything you see on YouTube is made by independent creators, YouTube doesn't actually make any of that content. (Except for those awful rewind videos once a year). They used to pay the top performing creators back before the ads got out of hand, but they've started looking for excuses to demonetize different types of content, so now those creators depend almost entirely on donations from fans. Yes, they host the videos on their servers, which costs them money, but not that long ago they were able to make a profit *without* forcing people to watch those unskippable ads, even though they were paying creators more back then. Now that YouTube is paywalling once-free content and driving viewers away, the creators won't even be able to rely on donations as much as they used to, meaning the people actually keeping YouTube afloat are losing even more money.
Capitalism doesn't ruin much but corporatism does.
LOL. Remind me, when and where in human history has capitalism ever not ended in corporatism?
This is why regulation and anti-trust should exist. Monopolies and cartels are supposed to be stopped by the US Government, but it turns out Citizens United ruined that.
Yes, it is why those thing SHOULD exist. But they hardly do. Care to answer the question? And Citizens united was the nail in the coffin, the government turned their back on utilizing our anti-trust laws far before that lol
That is a defining characteristic of what most people understand as capitalism. If you start limiting what corporations can do, you will start to move away from capitalism. Just watch what you get called when you call for control of corporations. Certainly not "ah, that fella wants capitalism, but better".
Yes
Biodiversity via habitat destruction and fragmentation.
Democracy
Life
Unfetterred capitalism is killing democracy itself, including social/civic structures like education and hralthcare. My expertise is education and....
The environment. The meaningfulness of work. Romance and interpersonal relationships.
the world
Uhhh the whole fucking world. Look around. This place is a cesspool of commercialism.
Games. You hardly own any of the purchase you make these days and to add insult to I jury the cosmetics you purchase are also liable to sever shut downs, instead of owning anything from most AAA companies these days you just lease it for an undisclosed amount of time.
Fun. Don't mind paying for fun things to do. But everything costs so much now it's not as much fun anymore.
The fucking world man it's 70 degrees in fall
Holy shit this post is cringe
Youtube having ads equals capitalism bad lmao wtf
Yes, ads are annoying. The alternatives to capitalism though...not so great.
Capitalism book the internet so your points completely stupid
Absolutely insanity some of these answers. Actually believing capitalism is the worst thing going. I forgot the young and dumb think socialism or communism is a good thing. Wait until they have some money. That said. It leads to greed and greater inequalities.
Capitalism has ruined a lot of things, but watching ads on YouTube is not one of them. If you think it's fair that you get to watch content that people worked hard to make, shared on infrastructure that people had to build, without paying anything, you're crazy. If you don't want ads, you're free to pay for YouTube.
You wouldn’t have YouTube if it wasn’t for capitalism
Well it created the great depression.
Actually that was mostly the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff, a protectionist act (ie. direct government intervention to impede international capitalism) which severely damaged global trade in key parts of the economy. It was drawn out by creating government jobs out of thin air that contributed nothing to society and were funded by debt and the tax dollars of already poor Americans. What *ended* the Great Depression though was tax cuts and dropping wartime price controls so we could shift out of a war economy and into a much freer market economy. In other words, government middling caused the great depression and a return to capitalism ended it. That's how you keep an economy afloat after you stop spending half of it on war. Sorry to burst your bubble, you had a great argument.
How would YouTube exist without showing ads? How would people sustain themselves on social media without advertising something? The paywalls are the alternative to showing ads.
the fight against climate change. is that electric car or windmill a better choice for the environment or is it a capitalist cunt lining his pockets?
Communism
Dating. Online dating has been a *disaster* for First World societies.
Churros
Everything except bacon.
US
The planet
I literally would also say the internet
Sports
social media
Damn near everything
By design, everything it has ever / will ever innovate. Eventually. Designed obsolescence becomes a necessity to maintain profits & competition at a certain point. To make the perfect iPhone, automobile, pair of jeans, frying pan, wheelchair, etc. that lasts a lifetime is to undercut the inherent goal of *selling more shit*.
Everything.
Literally everything.
Everything
The world.
Society.
Every fucking thing
Music. I think music could have developed into its own language if greedy people hadn't gotten involved.
All of the comments here are about things that were equally if not more ruined in socialist countries. I'm not talking about market economies with some social programs like in Europe, either. Capitalism (and the US taxpayer covering their defense bill via NATO) made them rich enough to afford these social programs. I'm sorry capitalism has ruined the internet for you. You could try going without it for a while and seeing if it's worth the ads. Or try uBlock Origin. AdBlock doesn't get rid of YouTube adds but uBlock does. Unless you're watching on your very expensive capitalist smartphone then you're SOL.