In order to call yourself a capitalist, you have to own capital.

It doesn’t qualify if you have a mortgage to your capital or debt to your capital. You have to own the thing or property outright and completely in order to say you have capital.

The majority of us are not capitalists because we don’t own capital.

We may advocate for it but it’s like arguing for your banker to stay perpetually wealthy and even more wealthier through your debt.

Some great answers here so I’ll do something different and I’ll give myself as a real-world example.

As a young adult, through a twist of luck, I found a cheap place to rent, so was able save a good amount of my income. I used that saving to get a loan, buy property, and used that property to get a loan and buy a property, and then do it once again. A short while later I now have no debt, can sit on my arse browsing lemmy in Bali (exploiting geo-arbitrage), and live off the market-rate rents my tenants pay back home.

If my tenants didn’t have to pay market-rate rents, they too might be able save some cash and become capitalists themselves. I could lower the rent, but then I would have to get a job and actually earn my living again. People born into wealth can even skip that step of having to earn their initial capital.

But whats the point of owning income producing assets (like property, or business) if you’re not improving your situation with it? The ONLY benefit of the capitalist system is that it allows the capitalist to reap the benefits of other’s work, thus reducing the burden of the capitalist to work themself.

It’s a ridiculous situation, I should not be able to live as I do, simply because I got a lucky break at the start of my working life, an opportunity that is given to the very few. The system should change.

I’m a bit libertarian leaning myself, but I do believe capitalism requires moral constraints on external, societal costs that are not included in market forces (e.g. environmental pollution).

In short, capitalism’s greatest benefit it is also it’s greatest issue: it delivers most efficiently exactly what people want, but without any evaluation whether those wants are beneficial.

When you have a system that values profits over everything, it tends to (either by accident or design) exploit workers and destroy the middle class.

With capitalism, you’ll pay the absolute minimum needed to get workers, regardless of the value they create for the business and regardless of how much profit your business is making. You’ll collude with other businesses to keep wages down, because again that’s a way to increase profit. You WONT support any worker rights laws like weekends, PTO, benefits, minimum wage, etc.

You can argue that the free market takes care of itself, but we’ve seen that isn’t true. Companies constantly exploit customers and workers. They will raise prices and lower wages in ways that a pure “free market” theoretically wouldn’t allow.

Now this isn’t to say capitalism is all bad. I do think smart people and hard working people should be rewarded. But any sufficiently large system is going to have some corruption. I’d like to have a reasonable minimum standard of living for everyone before we run off and let capitalism give us multi-billionaires. If everyone was guaranteed enough for a decent standard of living, I’d be fine with the rest being as capitalistic as anyone wants. But we dont have that. Minimum wage is $7. Healthcare is shit and tied to employment. Etc. etc.

Comments on a self-professed tankie instance

“BuT wHy Is EvErYoNe RiDiNg TaNkS”

This is LEMMY.ML, mister. Also, everything everyone else is saying.

Seems to be an extremely inefficient resource distribution system, where a few people end up with most resources while a shit ton of people lack basic needs stuff. There are some good existing work arounds, like social market economy - which tries to combine socialist and capitalist element in an unholily dialectic alliance.

Capitalism is currently causing vastly more problems than it is solving. It is concentrating wealth and resources in the hands of the few while the poor and working class suffer.

“Profit” is just another word for “unpaid wages.”

I’d argue it should be the default position.

Why should I respect this elaborate system of property rights that was largely built by and for terrible human beings who actively sought to tyrannize others for their own gain?

How much of the wealth held today can be traced back to morally illegitimate if not outright criminal beginnings?

I’d sum it up as capitalism requires egoism, and not of the healthy kind.

Capitalism is just feudalism with extra steps.

Capitalism is the worst economical system, but there is no better alternatives, as a ukrainian watching other developed countries i feel sad about my cumminist in the past country

I think that I hear the argument against capitalism the most from people who reference unskilled labor. Sure, the person working in a warehouse is getting screwed wage-wise because the company is greedy and they doesn’t have a unique skill set. But the guy in the office that is maintaining a proprietary piece of software has the leverage to demand a higher wage. I think when it comes down to it, capitalism is just another version of the economic “game”. I prefer this game to socialism (or really any other economic philosophy) as I know how to work the current system better. Don’t want to get screwed in your career? Specialize! I understand a lot of people don’t want to hear this as it puts the impetus on us instead of the rich, but that’s how the system works (for now). I will always be on-board with people wanting to better themselves and their situation (especially at the expense of the rich) but getting something for nothing just isn’t realistic without massive mobilization of the lowest wage earners. Not to mention the hurdles in our government.

Are you a billionaire? Or at least a +100millionare? If not, you are not pro-capitalism you are brainwashed

People are anti-capitalist because capitalist is anti-people.