r/CapitalismVSocialism

Lack of patents disincentivizes Innovation. I spend tons of time and money on r and d and then other companies come along and take it and sell it at a lower price because they don't have to recover the costs. Especially big companies with more resources. So why bother? However patents also cause monopolization of an innovation which is also bad. Neither situation is ideal. That's a flaw of the market. Maybe it would be better if we could limit the duration of patents more.

Instead, why not just have the government fund innovation and reward innovators and then make it freely available? Not corporate subsidies. Direct government projects. Have progressive taxes to fund it. Have the people choose what kinds of innovation they want and then allocate funding accordingly. Better innovation means more reward. More innovation and less monopoly power. More competition. Crowdfunding is one option but that's not gonna be enough for big innovations like new medical technologies. Maybe you can have confederations of coops fund it under market socialism.

We can set up the terms as we like, amd make sure all the different ways of avoiding the truth, such as minimizing, deflecting, ad hominem attacks etc, are called out as such and we are brought back to the topic at hand.

I am very open to broadening my view of the world amd I am open minded.

Who is in?

The problems most people have about capitalism is the practice of cronyism which capitalists oppose.

Cronyism always requires utilizing the government to influence the market. Socialism amplifies that exact problem by further integrating government and economy. The government needs to set up and enforce the rules but essenfially stay out of the market.

​Rent-Seeking: Profiting through lobbying and political manipulation rather than innovation.

​Regulatory Capture: Industry interests controlling the agencies meant to regulate them.

​Anti-Competitive Barriers: Using government rules to block new rivals and protect incumbents.

​Patronage/Favoritism: Distributing public contracts and subsidies based on connections, not merit.

​Socialized Risk: Expecting taxpayer-funded bailouts for failure while keeping private profits.

​Misallocated Resources: Directing capital to the "connected" rather than the most efficient, stalling growth.

We need to crack down on the practices. If we wish to maintain a free market we must root out those that erode the freedom of the market by engaging in these practices by manipulating the government.

As for socialism, most people in favor of socialism dont even know what the word really means. In socialism the government owns the means of production. They dont understand that all the problems that exist with cronyism exists 100 fold with socialism because you give government far more control of the economy.

As we mark another year of American independence, our traditional macroeconomic architecture is hitting a structural wall. We are trapped in an endless political loop between debt-fueled "tax-and-spend" policies and unchecked market consolidation. In the looming AI and automation era, neither legacy model can sustain the middle class or provide true financial independence.
The National Growth Compact (Version 1.9) proposes a foundational upgrade: transitioning our debt-based system into a generative, equity-based economy. By replacing complex corporate tax traps with a Universal Revenue Tax framework, we can establish a citizen shareholder model. This ensures every American holds a baseline equity stake in the nation's growth without choking free enterprise.
I have laid out the complete technical blueprint, universal revenue tax architecture, and anti-loophole mechanics for open public discussion.
I just launched a dedicated community at r/nationalgrowthproject to map out these structural mechanics. If you are interested in a genuine alternative to the standard capitalist vs. socialist gridlock, let's build the architecture together.

Looking at the Great Revolution of the modern era I got to thinking about how things turned out in terms of the goals for the people _who actually fought and lead them_.

The American Revolution, judged this way, is INSANELY successful. Imagine being an ordinary Patriot soldier in 1805, thirty years after Lexington and Concord. You are older now. Your hands hurt. Your teeth are probably bad because this is still 1805 and history is disgusting. You remember hunger, mud, smallpox fear, unpaid wages, worthless paper, officers yelling, Congress promising things it did not always deliver, and the basic fact that “liberty” in practice often meant “please keep freezing in this field while rich men argue about finance.” And yet! The British are gone. The republic exists. Washington did not become king. Washington did not become dictator. Washington did not even try for a third term, which is one of those facts we repeat so often that we forget how weird it is. Adams loses power. Jefferson takes power. Nobody storms the capital with an army. Nobody guillotines Adams. Nobody declares Jefferson the Great Helmsman of Virginia Thought. The newspapers are insane, the parties hate each other, but the basic soldier’s promise has held, we fought to become independent republicans, and thirty years later we are still an independent republic. The American revolutionary elite have pretty much THE best results in the history of serious revolutions? Washington dies revered. Adams becomes president. Jefferson becomes president. Madison and Monroe are waiting their turns. Hamilton dies stupidly but he is not killed by the revolution. He is killed by Burr being Burr and Hamilton being Hamilton. So the American Revolution being judged by “did the people who fought for it like the outcome thirty years later?” America is freakishly good.

Europeans often don’t take the American Revolution that seriously because they always look at the French Revolution. Well if you are an ordinary revolutionary soldier in 1819, thirty years after 1789, your answer is not simple (because the French Revolution did accomplish huge things!). Feudal privilege is gone. The Napoleonic Code survives the Bourbon Restoration in large part, which means the old France cannot simply climb out of the grave, dust off its lace cuffs, and pretend nothing happened. So the soldier can say, honestly, “We changed the world.” But then he has to keep talking. Because he has also spent most of his adult life marching across Europe. He has fought Austrians, Prussians, Russians, British, Spanish guerrillas, maybe half the continent depending on where his regiment got thrown. Napoleon rose, crowned himself emperor, conquered, bled France white, invaded Russia, lost, came back, lost again, and now the Bourbons are back. So what does the average pro-revolutionary soldier think in 1819? Probably something like: “We destroyed the old social order, but we did not get the political freedom we thought we were getting. We got glory, law, promotion, exhaustion, and graves.” The revolutionary elites? Mostly a murder chart. Robespierre dead. Danton dead. Desmoulins dead. Saint-Just dead. Hébert dead. Brissot dead. Napoleon alive but caged on Saint Helena. France is a revolution that partly succeeds for institutions and fails for almost everyone who personally tried to_help_ the Revolution.

The Russians fought for “Peace, Land, Bread,” and thirty years later the ex-Revoutionary soldier has found himself living through famine, collectivization, terror, purges, forced labor camps, and the memory of a world war that killed on a scale almost beyond human comprehension. Imagine being an ordinary Red soldier or revolutionary worker in 1947. Yes, the Tsar is gone. Yes, the Soviet Union survived. Yes, Nazi Germany was defeated. But if you were there in 1917 thinking the revolution meant ordinary people would finally stop being crushed by autocracy and war, 1947 is a very hard place to be happy with. The land did NOT become yours in the simple peasant sense. It became collectivized. Political disagreement did NOT become freedom. It became death. The party did NOT become the people. The party became the state, and then Stalin became the party. The revolutionary elites are almost comically doomed; Lenin dies from a stroke but that probably wasn’t helped by him being shot in 1918, Trotsky is expelled and murdered in Mexico. Bukharin is executed. Zinoviev is executed. Kamenev is executed. Rykov is executed. Russia is the revolution that most perfectly demonstrates the terrifying possibility that winning the revolution can be one of the worst things that ever happens to the _revolutionaries_ themselves

China in 1975 is more complicated than Russia because the revolutionary state is still led by Mao, and for many Communist elites that matters. But if you are an ordinary Communist soldier who fought through the final phase of the Chinese Civil War and you look around thirty years after 1945, you can point to real achievements. China is unified. Foreign domination has been broken. The People’s Republic exists. Literacy, public health, state capacity, and national sovereignty all look different from the chaos of warlordism, Japanese invasion, and civil war. That is the pro-revolutionary case, and it is not nothing. But then comes the rest of the ledger which is a horrible god awful nightmare. The Great Leap Forward produces catastrophic famine ( death toll above 20 million or higher). The Cultural Revolution then gives a huge wide spread death or imprisonment to teachers, officials, intellectuals, old cadres, local leaders, even loyal Communists can suddenly find themselves denounced, humiliated, beaten, exiled to labor, or politically erased. The Communist elite scorecard is mixed in a very Chinese-Communist-revolution way: Mao remains the towering figure, Zhou survives near the center, Deng has been purged and rehabilitated and purged again, Liu Shaoqi dies after persecution.. So yea, unless you were Mao, the results ain’t that great.

Iran . . . A lot of people talk as if the Iranian Revolution was just “the Islamists overthrow the Shah.” That is not really right. The revolution that brought down the Shah was a coalition, and coalitions are dangerous because everyone thinks they are using everyone else. The clerics thought they were using the liberals, the liberals thought they were using the clerics, the Marxists thought history was using everyone, the bazaaris wanted the Shah and his modernizing state off their backs, students wanted freedom, workers wanted dignity, nationalists wanted sovereignty, religious radicals wanted Islamic justice, secular leftists wanted anti-imperial revolution, and ordinary people wanted the SAVAK state and royal arrogance gone. In 1979, that could all fit under one enormous anti-Shah tent. By 2009, thirty years later, the tent is gone and only the Islamists matter. And that really really _matters_ because DURING the revolution the non-Islamic elements were not minor decorative accessories. Liberals around the National Front and Freedom Movement mattered to the success of the revolution. Marxists and leftist guerrillas mattered to the success of the revolution. Secular students mattered. Oil workers and bazaar networks mattered. The anti-Shah coalition was genuinely broad. But after the revolution, the Islamic Republic consolidates power and pushes aside, suppresses, bans, imprisons, exiles, or destroys pretty much every other revolutionary partners. So if you are an ordinary non-Islamist revolutionary in 2009, watching the Green Movement protests after the disputed election, your thirty-year answer may be bitter: “We helped overthrow a dictatorship and got a worse kind of authoritarian state.” If you are an ordinary Islamist revolutionary, your answer may be more satisfied, the Shah is gone, American influence is reduced, the Islamic Republic survives, and clerical power holds. But the most interesting scorecard is the revolutionary elite. Khomeini’s clerical faction wins enormously. The secular left loses. The National Front loses. So yea, the elite of one faction does alright but the every other elite in the Iran revolutionary coalition gets eaten for lunch.

So my ranking changes depending on whose eyes I borrow, which is probably the whole point.

For the average soldier or ordinary fighter FOR the revolution, I would rank them, America, because the republic actually resembles the promised republic. Next France, because the social/legal revolution survives even though the political dream mutates into empire and restoration. Next, Iran, but only if we separate Islamist revolutionaries from the broader coalition. Next China, because national unity and sovereignty are real but the Maoist campaigns are god-awful. Next Russia, because “Peace, Land, Bread” turns into one-party terror, famine, WWII and Stalinism.

For revolutionary elites, America is first by a mile, then Iran (But ONLY for the clerical faction), then China, then France and Russia dead (literally) last.

All in all the American Revolution still looks shockingly unusual because thirty years later, most of the people involved could look at the result and say, “I’m happy with this.”

That is pretty damn rare in revolutions.

A disease is quickly spreading throughout your country's population, and a large portion of your population is at risk. This includes obese people, the elderly, and people with pre-existing conditions.

During the pandemic, states and countries all had different approaches.

Would you shut everything down? US

Would you shut everything down, give people money for support, and provide them with food? South Korea

Act like the disease doesn't exist and hope COVID patients don't flood your hospitals. Florida

The theory that states that in a free market prices will tend to marginal cost is just another "economic abstraction" that doesnt help in anything and doesnt explain anything, and its framed in a confuse way because it wants to be seen as more profound than it is and to gatekeep people from it.

First, the "cost of producing another unit" means nothing. Does it assume the cost of producing another unit will be always the same? because the cost of producing x + 1 is one, x + 2 maybe very diferent, and certainly there is a quantity y where the cost will be very diferent than the cost of x + 1 and x + 2 quantities. So which one do you pick for a price?

But even if you assume the cost will remain the same, there is the cost of initial capital investment, in machinery and such, that is not accounted in the "cost of producing another unit". for example the cost of the machines that produce shirts is c, and the cost of producing x shirts is z, the cost of producing x + 1 will be very little, lets say 1. but if you place your price at lets say 2 so you supposed get profit, but what happens in reality is that you will not pay for the initial capital investment, so you will lose money and get bankrupt if you sell for little more than the marginal cost, imagine selling for the marginal cost...

But defensors can say that the cost of adding 1 unit of shirts will be accounting the depreciation of the initial capital, so selling for the marginal cost will not make the producer lose money. but if you say that, what you are essentially saying is that the price will be equal the cost of producing the thing, that is not explained by the marginal cost itself. marginal cost is not helping in anything here. and the theory of how costs are made must explain how the capitalist will make profit of it. both the cost producer and the shirt producer, because there is none of profits in this model.

and if you take into account that you cant sell everything for whatever price you put is another error of the theory. if you increase the unit by one maybe there is no consumers demanding it, so it will not make sense to produce more, and the price will remain in whatever price you put right now, with profits and such.

The very thing socialism proposes itself to be the antithesis of perpetuates into the very thing with spectacles of progression but reinforcement of classes that consists of the vanguards and the working class. I understand this is a sliver of socialist thought but this is what actualizes rather than kept in theory. You’ll have a bunch of leaders dictating how society should operate under socialism rather being part of the society they are orchestrating to fulfill the idea. Anybody who disagrees is stuck on theory rather than what’s been practiced.

What rules would you have for a card game called socialism?

A couple ideas to get us started:

-the deck has no kings or queens

- the dealer/commisar is the only one who sees everyone's cards

- Anyone with a pair must surrender one card to the dealer/commisar who will then decide who deserves the card

-the dealer/commisar can change the rules mid game to enforce equity

-lower number cards trump higher numbers.

Like what if both Capitalism and socialism can make up good societies if implemented correctly.

Like not even that a mix of both of them can work just that both of them actually can work if people just work together and implement it correctly.

Wouldnt it be funny if we all were just fighting all this time just to find out both sides are right😂

And im not saying both sides ARE right, im just playing with the idea.

Also i think there can be some truth to it, as we should not just blindly follow ideologies but be open to change our minds and together strive for a better future!

In "Principles of economics" Mengel furnishes an example: Two frontiersmen (living in a "virgin forest") each are in possession of something they have in excess that the other is lacking(cows and horses). They will of course only exchange as long as both parties subjectively consider it beneficial to themselves. From this and similar examples the author eventually derives a law, that price and thus the proportions of exchange are, as a rule, determined to be "equally far from the two extremes", constituted by the subjective valuations of the marginal buyer and seller. He thus considers the classical problem of exchange proportions explained.

It is abundantly clear at first glance that the gap between our everyday experience and the material situation of the Robinsonade is as wide as the gap between heaven and earth. Let us then try to apply the derived principle to an example closer to the economy of general exchange we are in today, as opposed to the accidental exchange of the Robinsonade. First of all, in our economy of general exchange as a general rule people have no direct use for the things they produce. Let us then image, instead of the two frontiersmen, a grain farmer and a miller.

The grain farmer has no mill, therefore the value in use for him of his own grain is 0. Just like in the Robinsonade we assume no established market where the farmer and the baker could sell their produce, for otherwise we'd be smuggling in proportions of exchange that we are trying to explain. The farmer therefore values all his grain combined as much as the smallest quantity of flour that he can use to bake bread, so he can survive. The miller on the other hand does value his own flour, but to make flour and survive he needs the grain of the grain farmer. He will therefore agree to any trade with the farmer, as long as he gets out of it the smallest quantity of grain he himself needs to survive and reproduce the flour exchanged.

From this "updated" Robinsonade we could in no way derive our previously observed law; but if we tried to apply it anyway, then we would determine that the proportions in which the next pack of flour will be exchanged for grain will (usually) be "equally far from the two extremes" of "barely enough for the farmer to survive" and "barely enough for the miller to survive", which is to say it can be anything at all.

Introducing money and markets into the mix does not resolve but merely complicates the problem. Money itself introduces a proportion of exchange. Suppose a baker is considering whether or not to sell his loaf for 1$ so he can buy apples or to eat it himself. An immediate question comes to mind: "How many apples is 1$?". If 1 apple normally costs 10$, he might prefer to eat the loaf. But if the 1$ buys 10 apples, he might prefer to sell the loaf. Thus even the subjective valuation between the loaf and 1$ depends on the quantities on offer for 1$.

The quantities on offer do not come from nowhere, but are in reality determined by the exchange proportions of goods on the market, and what we set out to do is to explain exactly these proportions in which goods exchange. That is the whole purpose and idea behind the classical conception of value and the ticket to fame of the "Marginal revolution" as a successor to classical economy. Even without considering the classical conception, our theory is clearly not complete if subjective valuations are it's pivot, the valuations depend on some definite context and we can't explain the origin of this context or the laws governing it. It seems like the context governing our laws has laws of it's own.

If an individual is to make a subjective valuation, he must be faced with a definite tradeoff. The tradeoff can not take the form of "X apples for Y loaves", where X and Y could be any arbitrary number; it must take a concrete form: "10 apples for 1 loaf". But the market doesn't only offer us apples and loaves as a tradeoff, it actually offers us an almost infinite series of goods to choose from, including cars and land and tickets for example. What is missing then is an explanation for how the market decides what constitutes a valid tradeoff.

In other words we are missing the explanation of the standard through which the market tradeoffs are constructed; In classical terms a standard of market value, which Mengel seems to consider 'untenable'. Without such a standard the theory can at best serve as an approximate explanation of "why" people exchange or a model of "how" a concrete exchange happens given the market context, but not as an explanation of the general laws apparent in a developed market economy.

In Part 2 we will systematically derive the standard, and along the way prove that the very core of Marginal Theory implicitly assumes all of the Marxian conclusions that the school denies, including surplus value and even class conflict.

PT2: https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/s/57VyImGtg0

For example,

Due to laissez-faire failures in the 19th century, I personally don't consider right-libertarianism a realistic ideology. Especially in our industrial economy. You need labor laws, a safety net, infrastructure, and some government intervention. Laissez-faire was a factor in the severity of the Irish Famine. In our connected world, diseases spread quickly. The government has to be able to protect its people.

Right-wing populism is out of the question, and so is all nationalistic forms of capitalism. Isolationism ruins economies; look how Brexit destroyed the UK economy. Living conditions worsen under fascist corporatist economies, as labor unions are busted, the wealthy are given tax cuts, there's privatization, and welfare programs are reduced. While you can own property with little government intervention in fascist economies, I'm not a fan of authoritarianism.

I don't consider Communism as well, this includes left-communism, an-communism, etc. Marxist communism led to authoritarian forms of communism, such as Maoism, Stalinism, etc. The government dictates everything you do, and you can't own property.

I don't consider left-libertarianism as it runs into the same problems as auth-left and right-libertarianism. It also hasn't been implemented on a large scale, so I don't have any real-world examples to compare to.

I'm center-left, so I stick to centrist ideologies.

The original post (sarcastic):

>It’s criminal the CEO makes 400X what the average worker makes but it’s perfectly fine that Taylor Swift makes 100000X more than the people who clean the arena after her concerts. A just society is one that rewards the exceptional qualities of the musician but not the executive.

Reply by Konstantin Kisin (shared by Elon Musk):

>This is because the anti-capitalist left is not actually against people being crazy rich. They're against certain types of people being crazy rich.

>Artists and athletes make sense to them because they've played music and sports and because their success can be explained by "luck" and "talent". Messi's wealth is not offensive to them because they understand Messi is much better at football than they are.

>But when it comes to business, the anti-capitalist leftist has no framework for understanding why Jeff Bezos might be super rich since 99% of them have never ever created a product, business or service that was of value to other people. They've never taken entrepreneurial risk. They've never employed people and felt the burden of responsibility that comes with that. They've never pick up a business and given it a play in the way they've picked up a ball or a guitar.

>They *literally* don't understand wealth creation. They think there is a fixed amount of money and the only thing a business does is split it unfairly.

>It's why they rage at Elon and other successful business leaders. Because they genuinely don't understand why they're wealthy.

>Also, and this is just as important, athletes and artists are disproportionately young, attractive, "diverse", left wing etc. Business leaders are "evil" middle aged white men whose success offends the average anti-capitalist leftist because they don't understand a) what it is they do and b) that Elon Musk has the same talent advantage on them as Messi does, it's just harder to measure.

Thoughts?

Anyone who understands the time value of money recognizes the capitalist is doing something economically valuable.

If you aren't aware, the time value of money is the fact that money today is worth more than money in the future.

The main reasons are:

1. Opportunity cost (the options you give up when choosing one option over another)

2. Inflation (future money tends to have less purchasing power)

3. Risk (future payments might not be received)

4. Liquidity (cash today gives you choices now)

5. Time preferences (people prefer benefits sooner than later)

The capitalist absorbs time delays, uncertainty, opportunity costs, risks, etc. before any revenue is collected.

Marx does mention interest, turnover time, and capital advanced into production, but he still treated profit as a claim on labor's surplus value, rather than also accepting the fact that it is *also* compensation for capital allocation, risk-bearing, and time preference.

In my opinion, Marx's understanding is incomplete.

Money today is not the same as money a year from now.

Capital tied up in production is not neutral.

The capitalist/entrepreneur is fronting the costs, organizing thr system, waiting, and potentially losing.

So my question:

**IF labor creates value, but capital makes the production process possible across time, then why treat the capitalist as merely extracting value, rather than also creating it?**

After regular socialism (banning trade, forcing everyone to work for the state and shooting anyone who complains) failed to make everyone rich and somehow caused a few famines, we’ve finally cracked it.

New plan: Force everyone in the world to become a capitalist.

It's like this;

• Capitalists are rich
• So just force everyone to be capitalists
• And then everyone will be rich

Genius. This is the actual true real socialism that we actually really meant to do.

• Just make every worker take out massive loans to buy their share of the company they work for.
• Machinists, engineers and line workers can personally finance the next car factory or semiconductor plant.
• Poverty in Africa? Simple. Force villagers in mud huts to be capitalists and then they'll be rich.

We’ll ban outside investment. Because the workers have to own everything. Which means they have to pay for everything. We'll force workers to pay for everything themselves because... someone might use a machine they don’t own. Which actually makes you poor, or something.

And obviously risk and time preference don’t exist. That's just reactionary propaganda. Anyone who spends vast sums of money on machines, buildings, materials, marketing, R&D and shipping just becomes instantly rich.

Coercion, a simple but important concept that serves as another difference between the philosophy of capitalists and socialists.

A typical socialist argument regarding coercion under capitalism goes something like this:

“Capitalism doesn’t actually give you freedom of choice. It’s work or starve.”

Or like this:

“Capitalism is coercive because one guy takes all the stuff you need to live, and sells it back to you.”

Or something similar like that.

Regardless, the critique is ultimately that capitalism is coercive, and from this a whole host of conclusions are drawn, along with the claimed “remedies” to the coercion.

So, how does socialism solve and eliminate coercion?

Do you think capitalism has developed the internet in positive or negative ways?

I’m middle aged and so I didn’t use the internet until I my late teens and not as a regular thing until I was an adult. To me it seems self-evident that the potential and utopian claims of horizontal markets, undermining big corporations, and web democracy have just become increased corporate monopoly power feeding slop to us while building a 1984-like video screen that watches us while we watch it.

Capitalism seems to hold back the potential of the internet while making it a toxic place only good for collecting data and addicting viewers to deliver ad space. Rather than connecting us, social media makes everyone paranoid that their interactions are actually bots with propaganda or sales pitches.