I’m in the medical field, and the number of people who absolutely despise private insurance, but despise public Health systems even more, for no reason, is too damn high.
They sound like my family. God forbid there be “socialized” healthcare that the “leeches” can benefit from, but also insurance sucks and doesn’t pay for anything and whoops now we have medical debt.
They don’t want their tax dollars to subsidize the care of anyone they think is less deserving than them, while they begrudgingly accept having to pay hundreds of dollars each month on an insurance plan that won’t even cover the care they need.
And they want to see every change introduced by Obamacare undone, so, have fun going back to insurance plans that can deny you coverage just because you have a preexisting condition that they don’t want to pay for.
Fun fact! The US is spending more on healthcare than it does on its military. By A LOT. The military gets around 4% of the federal budget, healthcare gets around 12%.
The US taxpayer pays MORE on healthcare in taxes than the the taxpayers in Switzerland or Norway!
Where does that money go, you ask? Why, to the pockets of the corpos owning private healthcare, of course!
Yep. Republicans like my family are still so focused on the idea of “welfare queens” and illegal immigrants who are sucking up their hard-earned taxpayer dollars, while completely blind to the fact that they are spending thousands in taxes and insurance premiums enriching corporate middlemen who provide little to nothing in return. So who are the real leeches?
“They have us fighting a culture war so we don’t fight a class war.”
…i always ask providers up-front what is my cost without using any insurance versus my out-of-pocket cost after insurance, and most of the time it’s substantially cheaper not to use insurance at all even though it won’t count toward my deductible…
…those private-industry middlemen are a huge burden on the healthcare system, and they persist only because their costs are hidden from patients…
It’s awful. And until you hit maximum out of pocket, the insurance company may not be paying anyway.
Something most people miss is that the speed of change is a barrier.
You can do socialism fast or slow, the fast way is like a revolution, which most people don’t want since it sucks for the individual.
The slow way, which imo is the better way, is just doing policies that get you closer and closer to socialism within the capitalist framework.
The second way often means helping people who are less fortunate than the average person first, before getting to your average voter. That’s what individualistic societies can’t get past, they want their lives improved now. They fear they will vote for things that benefits poorer people and then the next government would come in before it’s their turn.
IMO the solution to this is obvious, focus on policies that literally benefit everyone. Don’t do select benefit programs, do problems that help everyone. UBI is a perfect example.
The thing about the slow way is that it’s too readily reversible, and since the existing order allows the wealthy who would lose under such policies to consolidate power quite easily, those changes can be undone much more easily than they can be made.
Well the thing about the fast way is that it’s easily co-optable and you can end up with things really sucking for everyone just to end up in a worse position if you’re not careful.
Yeah, so it can possibly go wrong, instead of being guaranteed to go wrong.
You’re right, but being careful about stuff hasn’t and isn’t really working out for us.
And there’s the third method: subsume it from within. Build a capitalistic product that depreciates a category and eliminates demand, thus rendering entire industries and their related activities obsolete.
It’s why renewable energy is being fought tooth and nail.
Edit: and no, this is not my response to “fastest way to socialism”, this is more like “how to speed-run post-scarcity”
Just depreciate the worthless stuff. If the average person doesn’t need petroleum then that’s 1 less need they have to take care of. If electricity is so cheap from overproduction then it’s practically free.
And here’s where it gets controversial and I start getting downvotes on principle: AI is part of that.
I think you recognize a fundamental problem and yet do not address it.
Superseding an entire industry consolidates the economic weight of that industry into a smaller, more captive market. A capitalist push towards post-scarcity won’t work because the capitalists will always be motivated to implement artificial scarcity to protect their profits. Look at the current cost of computer hardware for one example.
A revolution of some sort would still be needed to truly make a post-scarcity economy, otherwise the fruits of those innovations will remain limited to the hands of the few.
Not if the push in question reassigns the value itself. And since we’re subsuming, I’ll base it off current fintech: imagine a blockchain but instead of smart contracts you do inference and buy tokens. That’s what upcoming tech is trying to work out the mechanics of.
policies cannot always benefit everyone. e.g. wealth tax won’t benefit the wealthy, consumer protection won’t benefit the corporates
Everyone except the wealthy.
Well public transport even helps the wealthy. It clears the roads for their cars
And moving to renewable energy sources will inevitably bring down costs and make it so if a tornado/hurricane/earthquake takes some power lines down a giant chunk of houses won’t all lose power, many of those houses will be able to keep refrigerators and necessities up until backup power from the grid gets restored.
Half the oceans ships are moving fossil fuels from place to place, so you can cut that tenfold… Making cleaner healthier ecosystems in both cities/towns and for the earth in general.
That sounds very much like must online leftists. Every single thing that improves the world slightly is pushed against, simply because it doesn’t solve every problem.
Of course, none of these people do anything for the Revolution they love so much. They’re evangelical at this point. Where the Revolution is the second coming, requiring no actual work, just believing in it.
Except things arent getting better slowly are they, and the one party that pretends it is moving toward socialism just openly told some very mild,slow reformers at the DSA that the dems arent a socialist party, they are a capitlaist one. Do you need a link?
So there goes your theory on that one.
It’s even worse than that, they think the root cause is immigrants, minorities, and trans people.
I think this meme fundamentally misidentifies the problem. People keep attributing every societal issue to “capitalism,” when many of the things they’re describing have very little to do with capitalism itself.
To be clear, I have plenty of criticisms of capitalism as an economic philosophy. Left unchecked, it incentivizes wealth concentration, externalizes costs, and often places profit ahead of broader societal well-being. There are legitimate reasons to criticize capitalism, and I don’t particularly admire many of its outcomes.
My issue is with the inconsistency in this meme. The behaviors it’s describing, pathological greed, regulatory capture, monopolistic behavior, and the relentless pursuit of short-term shareholder profits, are better described as corporatocracy than capitalism itself. That’s a system where large corporations wield enormous influence over government and markets, insulating themselves from competition and shaping policy to serve their own interests.
If you want to criticize corporatocracy, I’m right there with you. But treating every economic or social problem as though it’s simply “capitalism” is an oversimplification. Distinctions matter, especially when you’re trying to identify the actual root cause of a problem. If we’re going to criticize a system, we should at least be criticizing the correct one.
We are seeing people call it different things now, but “late stage capitalism” is moving to a post-capitalism of debit/leverage, where they don’t even own the means of production, they are renting it with borrowed money.
Said it better than I could.
People are greedy; greedy for any resource they can control. Today it’s money. It could easily be something else.
“But they wouldn’t be allowed to!” They’re not allowed to do what they do now, but they force courts and opinions to work otherwise.
Weak twitter-bait.
People don’t like any system, they don’t like obvious corruption and being taken advantage of.
But the world is very comfortable right now. Wouldn’t want to muck that up.
And if you tell them that they don’t capitalism, they’ll just screech that you’re a tankie.
Did they just source themselves? Is that a thing people do now?
For anyone asking themselves how socialism might work with current technology:
https://alexeyminin.medium.com/building-socialism-2-0-c698b2db66c
I should have read the title and saved myself one paragraph
You’d have to refute the points, not saying “noooooo it’s wrong” without bringing up a discourse. Until you don’t do it, it remains valid.
This is so fucking true
We need to start teaching that you can’t just throw capitalism under the buss. Unchecked capitalism, among other oppressors has lead to where we are. A fairly taxed and regulated capitalism combined with a solid and kind welfare system could be paradise. But eventually money and power will manipulate people. If not the ones who changed the system then the ones after. I would almost vote for a A.I. model of a senator who’s only motovation is the actual bylaws of the constitution.
I think as long as ppl can as individals buy massive superyachts we are fked and wont progress, only regress, the amount of toys, widespread power, and long term health you can buy with wealth only increases over time
I feel like it"s the opposite - people blame economic system for their problems because they look for an easy simple answer where they are justified of not doing anything.
Almost nobody hates capitalism. Even most of those who say they do actually like it.
I hate “whatever the fuck is happening right now”. Give it a different name, I don’t care.
Nah
You’re a closeted capitalist. You can come out, it’s safe.
Lmao, no, I’m a socialist. How much capital do you own? How many factories are in your name?
Capitalism isn’t good, it’s just the least worst.
Which is a complicated way of saying that it’s pretty good.
People overly hate capitalism. Almost no person in the entire world is for completely free market capitalism.
Capitalism works to increase efficiency and distribute resources effectively.
The issue is politics. Politics is broken not capitalism.
I feel like capitalism and free market are a lot more intertwined in people’s minds than they should be.
Capitalism is some people owning property that generates resources, and those people pick where those resources go (usually aiming for whatever makes more money).
The free market is allowing goods and services to be sold to the highest bidder, with varying degrees of oversight.
A free market can optimize resource distribution, with several caveats (hence the oversight). It can be argued when and where it’s ideal, but I think what’s being complained about here is proper Capitalism - that the ownership class is in charge of distribution. The free market is just their excuse, as there are cases (such as renewable energy) where the most profit-optimal choice is ignored in favor of whatever is more palatable to the ownership class.
Hahaha! Classic! Nice one.
Wait. Oh. Oh, no.
I agree with you that almost no one wants free market capitalism, but for a different reason. A totally Free Market or Lazzie-Faire style of government oversight doesn’t correct market failures.
An example of a market failure: between 2022 and 2025, the top 3 US egg producers colluded to raise prices above market levels, and the government intervened–with a lawsuit that ended with a $3.3M settlement.
Link to AP article
Lmao, capitalism works to funnel wealth to the owner class. Where did you get the notion that it increases efficiency and where in the flying fuck did you get the notion that it distributes resources effectively!?
Almost no person is for a comple anarcho-capitalism with zero regulations, that is correct. That also sounds like a very extreme view that goes directly against human nature. However, a lot of powerful people have figured out they can control the governing bodies against their competitors. The end-game is not “perfect” capitalism, it is some form of oligarchy, like Russia in the 90s and 2000s.
Still fucking sucks, and still a form of those with capital ruling over those without.
