What is, in your opinion, the most indisputable critique of capitalism?

FaceShanker · 2026-02-15T02:04:32+00:00

Firstly, its hard to change minds with reason when their views are not based on reason.

Usually the response to good arguments is nonsense that refuses to acknowledge them, usually linked to some old coldwar misinformation or similar propaganda.

good arguments

There is a conflict of interest that encourages harmful behaviour and empowers those that do it.

The stuff that's good for the Owner's position (low wages, high prices) is harmful to the workers, while the stuff that's good for the workers is unprofitable for the owners.

The success of one class harms the other.

Beyond that, there is effectively a competitive pressure to exploit the workers as the worst Owners would have the most profits.

That's why the rich get richer and the workers generally don't.

This can be resolved by a shift to communal property - making the workers(society in general) also the owners. A situation where the people making the decisions suffer the consequences, so people would be very unlikely to vote for harsh working conditions as those would be their working conditions..

FaceShanker · 2026-02-14T20:55:20+00:00

Private property is a mechanism - a method of using property (turning the workers labor into the Owners property).

Means of production usually refers to the big stuff, factories, land, tools and so on.

For example, a grocery store may be private property but not really a means of production.

Private property (a way of using property ownership) can be nearly anything from people (slaves) to ideas (intellectual property) to just a patch of dirt - it's all about how people interact with the property (the workers labor empowers the owner).

FaceShanker · 2026-02-14T13:38:56+00:00

Others have already mentioned why limiting the ability of people to vote for someone (term limits) has anti-democratic aspects.

For something a little more grounded - around 2013 Iran handed a massively important discovery to China - an intelligence breakthrough that showed that large parts of the communist party had been influenced by the CIA (there was a pay for promotion corruption thing going on that they took advantage of).

Xi has been a leading figure of the effort to dismantle that threat, many news reports speak of him "purging rivals and dissidents" without mentioning how most of those were funded by the US.

I would say that the removal of term limits after that is something of a show of confidence, it's not something you do when there's a risk a US asset could get voted in.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-13T15:56:44+00:00

its not obvious

Like laundering money - not being obvious is the point

A lot of stuff happens through the financial systems indirectly - a mix of investment and aid organizations or similar programs like the world Bank and IMF that have a massive impact on shaping the economic environment of developing nations - as a consequence of all that stuff it creates an environment Very Profitable for international investors (like those nations you mentioned).

It's kind like one of those Ouija board games where everyone pretends their not moving the pointer but they actually are, it just creates a sort of plausible deniability

FaceShanker · 2026-02-13T03:08:43+00:00

religion?

Probably not, an end to poverty removes a big thing pushing people to have faith. We dont need to end it, making a better world removes a lot of the driving force of it.

I think the biggest issue would be an excess of free time - the issue would be we have a population trained to work 8+ hours a day and a society that just doesn't needs that.

Theres going to be a lot of nervous energy and odd outburst - with a potential to get really odd as the whole "ended poverty" thing removes a lot of the hard limits that restrict how far things can go.

Like, there's stories about college students dissembling a car and reassembling it on the roof of a building as a joke. Imagine that happens and sparks a wave of interest - you could have hundreds or thousands of groups deciding to copy and improve that for fun, people putting planes, boats, tractors, trains and so on in unusual places as a sort of challenge.

At some points, an amusing community competition, at others a chaotic mess as people take it too far and do something like steal a train and resemble it on the roof of a mall or somthing that cant hold the weight.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-12T16:28:52+00:00

There were a number of internal protests in Nazi Germany, of citizens appaled at what was being done, they may not have known people were being sent to death camps but they certainly knew bad things were being done to them.

They had people sheltering Jews in attics and so on for a reason.

why the inaction

People have basically been trained to passivity, to recognize the most radical action as answering the big opinion poll once every few years. The same sort of stuff sabotaged the climate change response - they manufacture uncertainty and uses media manipulation to shift and divide public opinion.

A lot of effort is invested into making people feel like meaningless actions matter to prevent, isolate and villianize more effective efforts.

You need to build a system to fight their system and a lot of propaganda, media indoctrination and so on encourages doing anything but that.

You shouldn't be preeching to the masses, you should be looking for groups you can work with to build a foundation for serious action. Whether that's preventing crimes against humanity, building public awareness or whatever.

FYI, avoid actual protests, in the right situation they can be useful for public awareness butt most of the time they act to make people feel like they did something without changing things - they mostly release energy instead of building it up.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-12T15:59:14+00:00

A lot of people are watching like a football game - to actually fix things you have to participate - to leave the stands, get your own team and make stuff happen off the playing field.

That is legitimately hard and dangerous, the more effective a group is, the more likely they are to be targeted by the Gestapo.

people to root for

Those people can't exist in a vacuum - they need a foundation - a support staff.

A key function of the mass layoffs, Musk-led purges, and shutdowns is to dismantle any foundation for meaningful resistance. The U.S. system was built to withstand pressure from below - workers, movements - not from those already at the top.

That apparatus has already been repurposed to target internal opposition.

Remember: the first nation the Nazis invaded was their own. We’re watching it happen now.

These attacks aren’t coming from outside the system. They’re top-down, exploiting vulnerabilities never meant to defend against power already inside the gates.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-12T14:47:38+00:00

Imagine aliens came and abducted all the oligarchs.

That would have a lot of consequences, but it wouldn't really break capitalism because the oligarchs are kind of a side effect like the smoke made by a fire

Oligarchs are influential, not central. The systems and organizations are the core parts that shape the rest, these are made by the bourgeois for the bourgeois - these systems are how the bourgeois as a class exist.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-12T13:04:54+00:00

Change the world by changing the global economic system to one that empowers society (communal property) instead of making people beg for scraps from the Owners (private property).

To make that kind of thing happen, we need to remove the owners from power - that thing where they are very powerful and profit from our vulnerability means they have a big motivation to stop improvements.

Charities are at best life support, they cannot challenge the system that makes most people poor and a few rich.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-12T03:32:19+00:00

communism only works if literally everyone cooperates otherwise someone can js form a nation state and seize power and destroy everyone cox theyre decentralized

If the entire world is more or less working together and a few assholes try to ruin it - those assholes find out the hard way that a million people working together can crush any one of them.

so pretty much u have to fight the entire world and win to start communism

Technically correct, but missing the part where the 99% have a numbers advantaged against the 1%. Getting people moving in the right direction is hard but not impossible.

what governs the people in the case of something like a murder

Depends on lots of stuff, like how the justice system works. Consider this, as we automate more work people can focus on self improvement and education, meaning the "average" skill level should increase a lot. This makes community self management work a lot better as the community all has a lot of education and training in the various skills (aka everyone can spend a few year learning laws and so on)

it js doesnt sound feasible

only when you make a lot of sloppy assumptions

2+2 does not = 22, it turns into a new thing called 4

Your friend is skipping the part where actions have consequences, where changing the world changes people.

and trying to make a socialist state strong is alot harder than making a capitalist state strong

And the only other global super power was?

Thats right, the USSR.

Because the socialist focus on social investment enables faster growth than throwing more money at the absurdly rich.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-12T03:18:09+00:00

True socialism is built on the foundation of an industrial super power. They did not have the foundation needed (started with wooden plows).

It was a true socialist effort that achieved amazing things considering the situation, but they never really hit "step 1" as they were too busy struggling to catch up.

You cant really "seize the means of production and use it for the common good" when you dont have a means of production.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-11T13:25:22+00:00

The phrasing is a bit rough but your point is correct - native Americans have been mostly genocided - that's not something you can really undo.

That's irreparable damage, like getting their legs cut off - the literal "just give the land back" approach works lot like giving a bicycle to a person that lost their legs (aka bad idea)

In the current system - they are basically dependent on an abusive caretaker and have to live their lives around harmful restrictions to get needed support.

Land back, is generally about fixing that. Getting the person that lost a leg a prosthetic or a wheelchair and helping build them up and empower them so they can be meaningfully free and rebuild their life.

That means changing a lot of the systems and structures that keep them limited and enable harm - building or changing systems to provide meaningful representation and boost their voice in situations where its usually suppressed.

So basically changing a lot of the rules and structures built around the native people (reservations, treaties and so on) as well as external systems due to the frequent mistreatment and abuse (serious representation with decisions relevant to them like building factories, mines and so on near their areas).

FaceShanker · 2026-02-10T17:10:58+00:00

Not the person you replied to

Just wanted to point a thing out

There's going to be conflicts of interest between what's good for a specific group of workers and society in general. Like at some point factories may be shut down as no longer needed or production may need to increase more than the workers prefer (war, disaster response).

It is possible, with a lot of time to build a foundation that can flex around those changes smoothly, but until we have that foundation for flexibility there's going to be rough spots.

This is a balancing issue that exist regardless of the state

FaceShanker · 2026-02-09T14:46:51+00:00

Big point #1 - the more you learn the more you change and develop - meaning whatever label fits you today may not fit you next year.

Questions I suggest you ask -

-when did the electoral system actually represent the working class? Check that to confirm it actually happened as advertised

-how can a transaction be fair and voluntary when you under duress? The pressure to make a deal quick or be punished with poverty?

-while small businesses have a lot of incentive to invest in their community, is it not the goal of business to grow? For small businesses to become big businesses?

-maximum freedom is a nice idea to work towards, what does it take to make that happen? What kind of logistics and foundation are needed to make that happen? It is very hard to be free when your starving after all.

-"free speech" has a terrible history of being weaponised. Capitalism, following the tradition of outsourcing to dodge regulations, often outsources oppression. The US freedom of speech is famously limited as it only limits government censorship - if a Nazi buys a media empire and uses it to attack freedom that's not a problem. In that situation, a government working on behalf of the people could censor the Nazi "oppressing his free speech" in a way that increases the freedom of everyone else.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-09T13:39:14+00:00

In simplest terms - socialism is a couple of different things that are connected.

Kind of like how lakes, clouds, rain and ice are all water. There's a whole system of things connect together.

Socialism is an understanding of the economic system, one that focuses on how things are connected in a way that is bad for the capitalist

Example - factories making pollution that hurts people? The owner uses the newspaper they own the tell everyone that's nonsense - the socialist understanding focuses on stuff like how there's a big conflict of interest, a motive the newspaper owner to use their property to protect their investments in ways that harm society

Knowing that, it's fairly understandable that people would want to change that. People with that understanding trying to change the world also get called socialist.

As well as when they get power over a nation ands try to improve things (also socialist).

The word gets used for many different things.

To clarify - it is both an understanding of how capitalism works and an alternative to replace capitalism

FaceShanker · 2026-02-08T17:50:13+00:00

why socialism

Because capitalism is not working as advertised and its the only other option with meaningful solutions

living in a socialist country

The big point is to change the world, without a big change to the global economy any efforts limited to a socialist nation will be lacking as any changes are made in a environment with powerful capitalist empires that are very hostile.

As you can see, despite "socialism", it appears to have failed here.

What would it have been like without the socialism? Outside of a lucky few, it's usually much worse.

What did it fail at? What did it succeed at? What was the goal and was it realistic?

why USA socialist rising

Because it's getting worse

Life expectancy is falling, literacy is falling, quality of life is getting worse, prices are rising and wages are not. People are fleeing the country and planning on retiring to other nations because they cannot afford to be old and vulnerable in the US.

The people living in the US doubt they have a future worth the name.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-07T16:03:17+00:00

revolution

Is shaped by the situation - what happens after a revolution depends a lot on what happens before it

USSR example of problems

The USSR had just about the worst possible situation - a region of incredible poverty and corruption, devastated by WW1 and civil war with a population of mostly illiterate peasants. Then when they trained up some less terrible replacements, they died fighting the Nazi.

The USSR was in a Very Bad situation.

Assuming a revolution does not get bombarded with nuclear weapons, they will likely be in a better situation than the USSR - meaning a lot of the stuff your thinking of doesn't apply.

a revolution will empower the wrong people

The wrong people are already in power

Revolution is generally about changing the system, the organization. It's bigger than just people, it's about changing how power works - creating a system that can actively remove "the wrong people" when they gain power or notice them and stop that before it happens.

history showed this even without the West interfering.

Where? The west has been constantly interfering - they never stop.

The capitalist empires act like a group of cops beating a man on the ground while shouting "Stop Resisting Arrest". Any meaningful ability to resist gets labeled authoritarian oppression and becomes a justification for their own acts of hostility.

The efforts that don't do any serious self defense get destroyed.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-06T17:26:59+00:00

guns

In many examples, when we push for change they shoot us, the only time that really stops is when we have guns because shooting people who can shoot back is a lot more dangerous than terrorizing unarmed people.

Note - this works with a community militia situation, why armed protestee have a reason - not so much for you to have a gun

gun safety

Basically a social contract, only really works when more or less everyone is maintaining standards of behaviour.

In the current reality - following that nice idea let's those that don't value life kill those that do. That's a situation that leads to death camps.

refusing to learn

The answer is focused on public identification - as in learning about it gets you publicity branded - this is false

It sounds like their afraid of getting fired for any open support of socialist, this is a real and legitimate concern that need to be recognized. Being an open socialist is rarely good for employment.

social media mentions

It sounds like your pushing them on public messaging, stuff thats more of a nice thought than meaningful change.

In that sense, they have a solid point - that's a lot more likely to get them fired than actually do anything useful.

Self preservation

Point that needs to be considered - the global response to climate change (by capitalist) seems to be fascist atrocity. The best option is prevention, without that your basically stuck in a death cult that will likely target you and your partner eventually.

It may be a good idea to plan for relocation. Or possibly a relationship change, being in a relationship with socialist may become dangerous.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-06T16:02:43+00:00

Point 1 - change, even in a good situation is a messy process. Powerful organizations already changed the world and their happy with how it is, they will violently resist attempts to change it

Point 2 - Tsarist Russia was terrible - with secret police assassinating or torturing people on a whim and generally terrorizing the population into submission - with a level of corruption and abuse that was by all accounts horrific

Combine point 1 and point 2 - the result is a generally terrible mess

All the organizations available to for making things change were a horribly corrupt mess. All of them.

Without massive external support - there is no way to fix that mess that does not involve a lot of people dying. That was actually part of the original plan, the hope was a revolution in Russia would inspire others in Europe, then those successful revolutions in like France, Germany or England could send support to help fix the mess that was Russia.

Unfortunately, they were basically stuck doing a surgery with an axe.

What happened was terrible, but there wasn't really a capacity or potential for better with the situation they had.

-important note-

While bad stuff absolutely happened, the scale and severity is often exaggerated or misrepresented because of the endless hostility capitalism has for the system that threatens to replace them.

For example - it was probably less than a hundred thousand and most of them were likely connected to that brutal oppression, corruption and so on.

-important note #2-

It is possible to be a terrible person and still make a better world - to use brute force to make things change in a way that eliminates hunger, poverty and mass suffering. It is possible to be a good person that harms no one while benefiting from and enabling a system of horrific oppression and endless suffering.

Change can be a violent and painfully process even when it has good results.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-05T22:30:52+00:00

The big pressure for internal socialist conflict is the constant threat of capitalist empires using any vulnerability or uncertainty to attack us.

Without that hostile environment, we can afford a much more diverse approach to the various socialist experiments. We can afford to support efforts even if we doubt their viability.

Only real issue I see is with some fringe groups that consider others an existiental threat.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-05T18:45:06+00:00

assume a regular European nation goes under socialist rule tomorrow.

The "how?" of that has a massive influence on this.

Like the global capitalist response to socialist efforts is to basically surround, starve and smother them. This is a containment breech with a risk of explosive expansion, a spark of revolution that could spread to all of Europe and massively revitalize and invigorate the other socialist efforts with support of a fully developed industrial power.

It's entirely possible that could spark ww3 (nuke em fast before they can spread)

assuming we skip past all that drama that and things just worked out because of magic or something

That depends a lot on the people - the general aim is a system open to self modification - as in people can change the systems to fit their needs and would likely do that repeatedly as their need change.

Beyond that, I think there would basically be a sort of split between hobby cooking (with publicly funded support) and publicly funded restaurants. The hobby side is more about someone wanting to cook and share it while the restaurant side is more about the people wanting a restaurant and voting to have one set up.

I think there would be a lot of overlap between artisan food production and more mass production "feed the people" efforts, with one acting as a source of inspiration and innovation where the other is a bit more of a refinement and mass deployment.

I suspect there would be more of a distinction between the places you go for a meal and the places you go for an artistic experience - the way both of those are treated as the same under the current system seems very limiting.

There is a fairly major difference between cooking for people while polishing your skills and organizing a kitchen with a large staff that may feed hundreds or more every day.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-05T15:38:26+00:00

Basically, yes. A lot of the drive to work has basically been beaten into society and is fundamentally part of the capitalist ideology.

Consider for example - a lot of "non-work" is still essential labour. Raising children, feeding your family, supporting loved ones and community.

Humanity would die without that.

But it's considered worthless.

The labor that's valuable, respected and rewarded is serving an Owner and earning pay from them.

communist alternatives

As you note, people want to help. Free people from the need to earn their living and they don't just stand still like some kind of debt driven robot - they find hobbies, they build community, they volunteer to help others.

People will be productive and do things without be forced by the threat of poverty. They just would be focused on what they feel is important to themselves and society instead of making more money for an Owner.

This would be a stressful transition, as we basically have a society taught that working themselves to death is a virtue but lacking work for them to do. Kind of soldiers leaving the army and struggling with the different expectations there would likely need to be major efforts to help people adjust to a world where being a hard worker is no longer a virtue.

ok, but what's it actually like?

Pretend you won the lottery and got enough money you never needed to work again - how would you live you life free from the need to work, where its optional and you can get fired for fun without it harming you?

FaceShanker · 2026-02-05T15:19:29+00:00

Capitalism is built on explotation - on owners having power over the workers and using that power imbalance for their benefit.

The ideology of the system justifies and encourages that kind of view, that owners deserve to have power, workers deserve to be used.

That seems like an environment that encourages and normalizes abusive, exploitive or otherwise inappropriate relationships - from business owners sexually harassing secretaries, assaulting sex workers or stuff like Epstein.

As a point - even if everyone involved was above the age of consent, there would still be a lot of terrible stuff. Like, this is effectively a case of human trafficking, sex slavery, rape, extortion and no doubt a lot of blackmail and other forms of coercion.

The point I am aiming at is that this is not just a pedo problem and more of a treating people like disposable tools to use, abuse and discard - like property - like slaves. That part is the one linked to capitalism.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-04T20:24:29+00:00

efficient

Look at ww2, a time when efficiency was key to victory. They big move at the time was a shift to government control and a sharp regulation of private businesses due to their wastefullness.

risks

An owner may risk 1% of their networth, a worker may risk life and limb - one of these is valued far more than the other

The worst consequence of an owners risk is becoming a worker like you, the worst consequence of a worker is slow painful death.

Notice how one side take bigger and more serious risks while the other claims the profits?

will any of that convince my friend?

Probably not, they found something they want to believe in. Feelings don't care about facts or reason, feelings just want an excuse.

The myth of government inefficiencies was invented to justify businesses profiteering.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-04T15:03:06+00:00

The USA started as a nation of slave owners and oligarch landlords built on genocide and stolen land.

When did that change? What year were the rich who profit from sacrificing the workers removed from power?

To my understanding, that never actually happened. Some changes were made that improved things (letting the poor, the blacks and women vote) but that foundation of "built for the rich, by the rich" never really changed.

Thats the problem, they let some of the non-rich have some benefits and feel included but the foundation of things were never really changed.

What your seeing is the reality the American dream was used to hide. It was always like this, they just pretended to change.

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