r/CapitalismVSocialism

Whenever the Labor Theory of Value is defended in economic debates, the core claim remains the same: the baseline exchange value of any reproducible commodity is anchored in the socially necessary labor time required to extract or produce it. Proponents argue that value originates in human labor inputs, with market prices merely fluctuating around that labor-cost center of gravity.

A straightforward way to test whether this holds up is to look at extractive industries where two different commodities are produced using the exact same physical labor and extraction process.

Consider the extraction of corundum. Chemically, industrial corundum known as emery and gem-quality corundum like sapphire and ruby are the exact same mineral: aluminum oxide. When mined from the same hard-rock deposit or alluvial gravel bed, the labor inputs per ton are identical. Workers perform the exact same drill and blast operations, run the same heavy machinery, burn the same fuel, and log the same crushing, washing, and sorting labor hours. Yet, once sorted, industrial emery sells for pennies or a few dollars per kilogram as an abrasive blasting grit, while gem-quality rough sapphire or ruby commands thousands to millions of dollars per kilogram.

You see the exact same dynamic in hard-rock pegmatite quarries. A single blast extracts feldspar and industrial quartz right alongside spodumene, which is hard-rock lithium ore. The labor time and extraction cost to blast, excavate, and haul a ton of rock from that specific pit are completely uniform. Even so, feldspar sells for roughly twenty to one hundred dollars per ton for basic ceramics, while spodumene concentrate can fluctuate from one thousand to over five thousand dollars per ton depending entirely on global battery demand cycles. When battery demand surges, the price of the lithium ore explodes while the price of the quartz sitting right next to it remains flat, even though not a single second of additional extraction labor was added to either.

Under strict Labor Theory of Value logic, if two commodities share identical socially necessary labor time to extract and process, their baseline economic values should be equivalent.

In reality, labor inputs establish a cost floor for production, but they do not determine economic value. Value is determined downstream by subjective consumer utility, marginal preference, and supply constraints. Two rocks pulled out of the earth with the exact same simultaneous labor expenditure will diverge wildly in exchange value simply because the market values what one can do far more than the other.

i have been working on definition of capitalism and i want GOOD FAITH critique.

Capitalism is an economic system defined by the private ownership of the means of production and the profit motive of the agents who hold that ownership.
It requires markets - price-mediated exchange, as its operating mechanism, but is conceptually distinct from markets themselves: it neither requires, nor tends to sustain, the classically free conditions of those markets.
i place great emphasis on the definition and conditions of a classically free (numerosity of roughly-equal agents, low friction, price as a pure function of supply and demand) as opposed to to a lassiez faire market (no government intervention), they are not the same.
Left to operate absent exogenous checks, capitalism structurally erodes those conditions, converging markets toward oligopoly rather than preserving them, i will explain the mechanism below.

Within this system, profit-motivated agents are incentivized to seek not only profit (return earned through productive contribution) but economic rent - value extracted purely from ownership and market position, independent of productive contribution, with the barriers created by function of market share and size.
because rent is depended on market share incentives are aligned to concentrate markets, however not all markets offer the same rent .
The magnitude of rent obtainable from a given increase in market share is a function of these parameters i have identified - capital intensity, economies of scale, demand inelasticity, and switching friction which are simultaneously the constituents of barriers to entry.

Because rent-derived resources can be reinvested into strengthening those same barriers (economies of scale, wage suppression via monopsony power, influence over the regulatory and labor environment), increased concentration is both a reward the market provides and a cause of further concentration — a self-reinforcing loop. (this is a source of good in a free market because they encourage capital production but will also end up killing the free market.)

This loop is bounded only by two things:

(1) contestability :new-entrant competition or disruption that redefines the competitive basis rather than contesting incumbents on existing terms whose force is itself a decreasing function of the same three barrier parameters

(2) external check : (regulation, antitrust, institutional constraints on capture), whose effectiveness depends on how insulated they are from capture by rent-derived influence rather than being automatically exogenous.

Recently, I noticed the concept of libertarian eugenics. David Friedman is one of its modern proponents. He has argued that evolution is inefficient and that humans should be able to intervene in this process, although he opposes state intervention in it.

My concern is that libertarian eugenics go beyond transhumanism. I want to ask libertarians and capitalists about the feasibility and efficiency of this approach. I will start with relatively simple concerns and then move on to more difficult ones.

“If we develop sufficiently advanced genetic engineering, we could have a future in which the genetics of the population are determined not by what genes produced reproductive success for their bearers, but by what genes some people chose for other people to have, with the choice made in either a centralized manner by government or a decentralized manner, probably by parents for their children.”

I support transhumanism. However, currently, we cannot bioengineer already-living humans in the way this hypothetical scenario assumes. Therefore, parents would essentially control how their children are genetically modified. For example, imagine a parent inducing myostatin deficiency in their son to help him win an Olympic sport, while potentially subjecting him to a painful and prematurely shortened life. How would libertarian principles deal with this conflict between parental freedom and the child's autonomy?

“Suppose we conclude that some of the causes of criminal behavior are genetic; perhaps that there is a gene, more likely a group of genes, for psychopathy. Instead of sentencing a criminal to be imprisoned we sentence him to have his genes revised-a brand-new, high-tech version of the old dream of reforming criminals instead of deterring them.”

Obviously, solving a problem such as extreme aggression through genetic intervention could sound reasonable in some circumstances. However, this also raises the question of what private prisons could do if they were given the ability to alter a person's biology. The privatization of the ability to intervene in human freedom and biology seems concerning. What prevents a private company from using genetic modification as another form of punishment or coercion?

“Legalizing the adoption market, permitting adoptive parents to pay a woman for the right to adopt her baby.”

This is more concerning to me because it involves trading children who are already born, rather than embryos or reproductive rights. It could essentially amount to infant commodification or even a form of child slavery, depending on how the system is structured. Of course, commodifying adoption could potentially increase incentives to produce or raise children who are considered more desirable, but that does not necessarily make the system morally acceptable. How would libertarians distinguish a legitimate market in adoption from the commodification of human beings?

“The obvious solution is for the contract by which the baby is produced to include a lifetime license to use the patent within that child's body, just as the contract by which a farmer buys genetically engineered soybeans includes the right to have the resulting plants reproduce their patented genes in the process of growing.”

If I understand Friedman correctly, this would imply that genetic technologies could be patented and licensed in a way that creates obligations extending throughout a person's life. Therefore, if parents wanted to have a healthy child or provide certain biological modifications, they have to purchase a license from a company.

This raises an even more fundamental concern: could a company effectively acquire property rights over aspects of a human being's biology? For example, company restrict where a person can receive healthcare, whether they can receive further genetic modifications, or how their biological characteristics can be used? If so, where would libertarian property rights end and individual bodily autonomy begin?

Final and most dreadfull.

In Biologia e política: eugenismos de ontem e de hoje, David Friedman is described as an “ultraliberal economist,” and the text claims that Friedman proposed a voluntary sterilization scheme in exchange for payment. Furthermore, if someone were to live under some kind of corporate state, a CEO could potentially demand sterilization.

This raises another concern: could corporations acquire the power to intervene directly in human reproduction? A company could, for example, offer substantial payments for sterilization or impose reproductive conditions on its employees. In an extreme corporate-state scenario, a company might even decree that infants with certain abnormalities must be euthanized and require parents either to obey or leave the corporate territory.

So, I want to ask about the feasibility, morality, and reasonableness of libertarian eugenics, as well as the specific positions advocated by Friedman and others that I have listed above. In particular, I am interested in how libertarians and capitalists would address the conflicts between parental choice, individual autonomy, property rights, bodily integrity, market incentives, and the potential for private coercion.

People on this sub have frequent arguments about authoritarianism. And what it really is. neoliberals/libertarians would argue that government overreach and taxation and wealth redistribution are all “authoritarian”. Socialists would argue that wage slavery and a lack of democratic ownership of property is “authoritarian”.

The idea of “democracy” is also something that both systems struggle with. In liberal countries rich oligarchs who own companies and land often control the outcomes of elections, and the people they elect do undemocratic things, like get involved in illegal wars or use violent suppression of dissent. In socialist countries similar things happen where elections are usually a lot more limited and elected leaders do undemocratic things like punish dissenters or violently shift production.

Ultimately neither system is really democratic. And both are authoritarian. People should stop arguing about that and instead focus on why they support capitalism or socialism and explain how their own experiences have lead them to supporting which ever.

Also yes decentralized forms of socialism exist but those would cause extremely negative effects for humanity. Like mass loss of scientific knowledge, more war, and ultimate degradation of quality of life. Decentralized capitalism is also terrible and leads to slave societies.

A nurse, teacher, plumber, or construction worker goes to work and earns a paycheque. The government taxes that money as income.

But rich people can make money from stocks, businesses, and property. Some of that money can be taxed less than money from a job.

This seems backwards.

Workers build homes, teach children, fix things, and care for people. Society needs their work.

But our economy can make it easier to get rich by owning and trading things instead of working or building new things.

Why should money made from wealth get better tax treatment than money someone worked for?

Let’s stop pretending anymore. The promise is dead, the social contract is completely broken, and anyone who isn’t blinded by corporate propaganda can see the rot right in front of their faces.

We exist inside a massive, engineered hamster wheel. You wake up exhausted, commute to a soul-crushing job where your boss extracts every drop of your surplus value, stare at mindless short-form video feeds designed to keep you sedated and docile, buy cheap plastic garbage you don’t need just to feel a fleeting drop of dopamine, collapse into bed, and repeat the entire loop the next morning. It is an endless cycle of production, consumption, infotainment, sleep, repeat.

Meanwhile, the middle class is getting hollowed out in real time. Young people can’t afford homes anymore because the property market was turned into an unchecked speculative casino for well-connected elites. Decent white-collar careers are evaporating, youth unemployment is quietly spiking, and an entire generation of over-educated graduates is staring down the reality that they will be permanently poorer than their parents. If you burn yourself out working brutal 12-hour days, six days a week just to keep your head above water, society calls you a "grinder." If you refuse to participate and just want to check out of the rat race entirely, the media brands you as lazy and defective.

And who benefits? A tiny, corrupt cabal at the very top.

A handful of untouchable oligarchs and state-backed monopolies control the critical infrastructure, own the tech platforms, and dictate public policy behind closed doors. They enrich themselves while polluting the rivers, smogging the skies, and burning down the biosphere with zero accountability. Whenever regular people start getting angry, the regime’s media apparatus manufactures a new cultural distraction or pumps out nationalistic hysteria to keep working-class people fighting each other instead of looking up at the people holding the strings.

Voting? Please. "Democratic participation" is a total farce, a carefully staged piece of political theater where the party machine selects the approved candidates long before anyone casts a meaningless ballot. Every institution is captured. Every metric is manipulated. The system isn't broken; it was designed to exploit you.

Which is why I honestly don't know how anyone in Shanghai, Shenzhen, or Beijing can stand living under the Chinese Communist Party for another single day.

During a recession, people lose jobs and spend less money. Businesses lose customers, so they also spend less and may fire more workers.

Austerity says government should cut spending too and let the private economy recover.

But then who is spending money?

If workers, businesses and government are all cutting spending at the same time, does that make the recession worse?

Is there strong evidence that austerity has actually helped countries recover faster?

Or does history show that temporary government stimulus, such as infrastructure, jobs and support for struggling families, works better until private spending returns?

I know you wont like this very much. There is a reason why socialists and communists gets called the flat earthers of economics. We look at the same evidence and only one side cant understand what it actually means.

As an example, globe earthers says the horizon is clearly proof we live in a sphere, and that flat earthers says "nu hu"

A comparison with socialists and communists, capitalist say supply and demand and you say "nu hu" even though that single thing proves nearly every single thing.

Trying to even read a socialists or communist comment about how capitalism is wrong, and what they actually complain about is the state, not the free market.

I am however in no way saying capitalism is perfect, it has a million billion flaws, but the outcome is always better for everyone, why is that? Because economics is about the real world, we compare the outcomes between countries for example. We do not compare the problems society has with our imagined utopia.

Socialists and communists knows so little about basic economics that when they are actually arguing about an economic system which capitalism is only, they understand nothing at all. It actually reminds me of a flat earther called "sleeping warrior" and in an interview he was asked about the iron age and when that happened and he said "around 150-200 years ago maybe" im paraphrasing here. He said because that was when we started to make boats out of iron. Imagine even being that wrong in the first place.

And when it comes to economics, that is how wrong socialists and communists almost always are. But there is another saying in economics as well, "if socialists and communists understood economics they would not be socialists or communists" and that statement is very very true. Because i have seen socialists and communists learning and understanding basic economics and they never remain as socialists or communist. Not once has that actually happened.

And when i say economics, that is 100% only a study of the real world, compared to other parts of the real world. We see "with a few exceptions notably oil or a natural resource" the more production a country has, the richer the people in that country. And looking at production, we also see the less capitalism the less production.

China is sort of a good counter argument but not really, its not the free market the dictates anything there, just the communist government that tells you "you work here and you work 12 hours a day 6 days a week". The market doesnt demand that. the people arent free to choose how much they want to work the state does.

And to some degree that is also true in capitalists countries as well, because the state has a vested interest in that you work more, you work more you also earn more which means that state gets to take more of what you earned. So they want you to work.

You know so little about basic economics that you rarely even know when its the state or when its a company that does something. And when the state does something wrong you say "look at how capitalism is failing the people" or some dumb nonsense. When companies does something they shouldnt do, you rarely if ever say this company did something wrong. When a company uses its money to bribe the state, that is exactly what they should do because it can give them even more money. Now we the citizens dont like when this happens obviously, but notice trying to offer a bribe is not the same thing as accepting one. And the politicians writes all the rules and since they havent banned this process, they obviously likes to get bribed. Even though it is very very wrong and both capitalists and socialists agrees here.

That reminds me of another thing in just this subreddit, when the state was handing over money to failing industries a couple of years ago. A shit load of socialists were saying something along the lines of "you got what you wanted now, are you happy?" And not a single capitalist were in favor of it. We were all against it. Neither socialists nor capitalists wanted the state to do that. But for some stupid reason the socialists here just never managed to understand that prior to its happening, even though not a single capitalist said they thought it was a good thing. And that is how poorly socialists even understand what we capitalists actually wants. they simply dont have a single clue. They think we are just bootlickers for the companies but no we are not at all.

Marx predicted that increasing tensions between the proletariats and the bourgeoise would ultimately result in a socialist revolution. But he did not anticipate society's response. Marx did not foresee reforms to capitalism that would relieve, at least in part, some of capitalism's predicted class tensions. Societal reforms have included:

• labor unions,
• progressive taxation,
• social insurance,
• antitrust,
• regulation,
• corporate governance,
• monetary policy,
• and democratic political reform.

Did Marx fail to anticipate that these class tensions would be resolved by making incremental changes to capitalism, allowing it to survive? Or, is the revolution coming?

I have a question for those that support Co-ops. Say there is a Co-op doing relatively okay. Maybe it's time to expand. Get new departments. New sub-enterprises. The usual.

But the Co-ops produce weird incentives.

Maybe, as often seen in the former Yugoslavia, the workers' incentive is making their own income bigger, rather than expanding and hiring new people.

Which could result in higher unemployment rates if that kind of enterprise is popular in a state.

What's your answer to that? How do you solve this incentive? Is it even a bad thing? Am I missing something?

The society I envision starts from a principle that democratic socialists already take seriously: ordinary people should have far more control over the institutions that shape their lives. Where my approach differs is that I do not believe achieving economic democracy requires concentrating economic power in the state. I would rather distribute that power as widely as possible—among workers, communities, consumers, and democratic public institutions.

Most mature businesses would operate as worker-owned cooperatives. Workers would elect their leadership, have meaningful representation in major decisions, receive fair compensation, and share in the surplus their labor helps create. Managers and specialists could still earn more for greater responsibility or scarce skills, but the company would exist primarily for the benefit of the people who work there and the customers it serves rather than outside shareholders seeking ever-higher returns.

These cooperatives would still compete in genuine markets. If one company pays poorly, talented workers would have an incentive to join a better one. If another charges excessive prices, consumers could choose a competitor. Competition would therefore take place primarily between businesses for workers and customers rather than between individual workers struggling against one another for basic economic security.

Outside investment would remain possible without allowing wealthy investors to accumulate control over workplaces. Established cooperatives needing capital could raise money from the public through time-limited investments similar to bonds. An individual might invest $5, $500, or $50,000 in a cooperative they trust, receive an agreed return for providing that capital, and eventually be repaid. Investors would be compensated for risk without gaining permanent ownership or governing power over the workers.

Government would have a different but equally important role. Democratic public institutions would guarantee or provide essential services that markets frequently distribute poorly or unequally, including healthcare, education, infrastructure, transportation, public spaces, and other basic resources. Access to healthcare or education should not depend on whether someone happens to have the right employer or enough money at a particular moment in their life.

Providing these guarantees would expand individual freedom rather than diminish it. Someone could leave an abusive employer without losing healthcare, change careers without risking their family's basic security, pursue education, start a cooperative, care for a family member, or take an entrepreneurial risk with a stronger social foundation beneath them.

At the same time, government itself should remain democratically accountable and constitutionally limited. Civil liberties, freedom of speech, due process, equal rights, privacy, freedom of association, and the protections of the Bill of Rights should remain fundamental. Replacing concentrated corporate power with concentrated government power would simply exchange one hierarchy for another.

The objective is therefore not central planning and not unrestricted shareholder capitalism. It is the democratization and decentralization of power.

Workers should have power in their workplaces. Citizens should have power over their government. Consumers should retain meaningful choice. Entrepreneurs should remain free to create new enterprises. Investors should be able to earn reasonable returns for supplying useful capital. Communities should have strong public institutions available to everyone.

Economic growth would then have a more direct path toward improving ordinary lives. When a cooperative becomes more productive, the people doing the work can receive higher compensation, better benefits, shorter hours, stronger retirement security, improved workplaces, or profit distributions. When technological improvements reduce production costs, competition can help push those gains toward lower prices rather than allowing all of the benefit to accumulate at the top.

This system does not require everyone to earn the same amount, eliminate markets, abolish private possessions, or have government officials run businesses. Its goal is much simpler: prevent enormous concentrations of economic power from allowing a small number of people—whether corporate owners or government officials—to dominate everyone else.

The underlying principle is that democracy should not stop when a person enters their workplace. A genuinely free society should give ordinary people meaningful control over both the political institutions governing them and the economic institutions in which they spend much of their lives.

The desired result is not perfect equality. It is a society in which prosperity is broadly shared, necessities are accessible, markets remain competitive, work provides dignity and security, political rights are protected, and neither extreme wealth nor centralized government can easily overpower the individual.

In short, it is an attempt to combine economic democracy with individual liberty: public provision where collective action works best, competitive markets where markets work best, and democratic worker ownership where concentrated private ownership currently gives a small minority disproportionate control over the economy.

The elite is a tiny minority compared to the billions of people living on this planet.

So why do 80–90% of people just accept the system instead of trying to change it or make it more fair?

Sometimes I feel like we’re stuck in an endless dream. Work, consume, social media, entertainment, sleep, repeat.

We have the numbers, but we’re too divided, distracted or scared to actually use them.
Maybe the biggest power the elite has isn’t their money.

It’s keeping everyone else divided etc… , but i thinks it’s very deep Also

The real question is: in the end, can politics even change anything in a system that seems too powerful to be changed?

People wouldn't invest all that time and money into becoming a doctor if it didn't pay off in the end.

If the investment didn't pay off because cashiers and doctors got paid the same then people just would not become doctors.

But what if there is no investment.

What if training to be a doctor is a job that you get paid for?

What if training to become anything is a job that you get paid for?

Would people still not pursue highly skilled jobs, even if the pay was the same as low skilled jobs, but the pay applied to both the years and years spent learning the skills as well as practicing in the end?

All of those co-op dominated regions in Italy? Nice.
Revolutionary Catalonia? Good job.
Paris commune? Well done.
Pre-industrial tribes? Almost a meme at this point.

I don’t give much weight to these examples because scale, both geographical and temporal, are key challenges that an ideology must overcome if it is to have staying power. I have no doubt that some sort of small socialist enclave could survive or even thrive for a few years, but all of them seem to inevitably collapse. Why? We could use the Israeli kibbutzim as an example. These were small agrarian-based Zionist-utopian societies that practiced collective ownership, workplace democracy, and even community child rearing. Most of them eventually shuttered or liberalized over 100 years of existence. Because they were the topic of so much academic attention in the 60s through 90s as a “socialist laboratory”, we have many papers and detailed interviews on why they declined. The biggest reasons were:

• Freeloading: many people simply didn’t show up to work because they knew they would be taken care of. It’s not just a meme. This bred resentment and distrust, which led to….
• Brain drain: the most ambitious workers saw no incentive to stay and emigrated to work in the nearby cities.
• Loss of fervor: although the first generation of founders were devoted followers of the socialist philosophy, their children were not and desired more independence from the community.
• Loss of familiarity: for the smaller kibbutzim, it’s much easier to bind everyone together when you personally know each member. Once the large communities exceeded a couple of hundred members, distrust skyrocketed because you were no longer always working with or for someone you cared about.

Notice all of these issues have to do with scale, especially the third point. Your ideology cannot rely on fervor, lest the next generation disavow it. It must be self-sustaining and able to operate over billions of people. This is also why capitalists tend to talk much more about the Soviet Union, for example, because this is one instance where it actually did survive for multiple generations over millions of people. Even if you want to criticize capitalism, you cannot deny that it has not only survived but thrived among more than a hundred nation-states and for multiple centuries. Scale matters.

I have heard that capitalism is more efficient than socialism. Or that markets are efficient. Or something.

These types of claims raise a question.

What do you mean by 'efficiency'?

It is not in the spirit of the question to look up an answer before responding.

I suppose I can say this question is part of a series:

• What do you mean by the labor theory of value?
• What do you mean by supply and demand?

Im trying to learn more about socialism I pretty much got a grasp on most of the things I just dont understand the Compressed wage ratios like does it mean a doctor and a cashier get nearly the same amount but since you need to work way harder to become a doctor and you dont even need to do anything to becone a cashier how does it make sense do they expect people to work harder just for free or does it have any other benefits (My english is not the best so idk if I explained it that well)