I think this sums it all:
""The word 'capitalism' doesn't mean what it used to," said Zach Lustbader, a senior at Harvard involved in conducting the poll, which was published Monday. For those who grew up during the Cold War, capitalism meant freedom from the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes. For those who grew up more recently, capitalism has meant a financial crisis from which the global economy still hasn't completely recovered."
In my opinion Capitalism is not the perfect system, it's better than the alternatives.
That, however, doesn't mean we should not criticize and try to amend any wrongdoings that Capitalism has evolved to have.
Capitalism is free competitive markets and inability to lobby the government into protecting coercive monopolies. I don't know if anywhere in the world pure capitalism exists.
Many monopolies are natural and the free market concept isn't infallible. That a truly free market doesn't exist might hint that it's not possible. True communism has never happened either.
This is why I mentioned _coercive_ monopolies. Natural monopolies are OK (e.g. Google search), as long as nobody tries to protect them by law and force.
If natural monopolies are left unchecked to grow in power, how can you be sure that they won't become powerful enough to use force to protect their or their cartels' interests?
Because the ability to use force is generally a monopoly of the government, precisely for that reason.
A better question would be "how can I be sure that capitalists and government won't cooperate for establishing monopolies"? For that, I don't have an adequate answer. At least, in capitalism, there are competitors lobbying against it, creating some virtual political market. Full government monopoly is generally much worse.
I think we disagree on the definition of force. I don't think of force as just the power of law, but also the power of size and power.
A natural monopoly could, without any government interference or help, exert a lot of the same coercive tactics a government-supported monopoly can. With a large enough size, a natural monopoly could make the barriers of entry for any potential competitor so insurmountable that it would have the same effect as making competition illegal.
Yes, but once a monopoly happens, that market is no longer free, competition becoming impossible without regulation. A monopoly can also supply virtually unlimited resources for expanding in other markets without breaking any antitrust laws.
The only thing that can break monopolies naturally is technologicall progress, because only new technologies can make older monopolies obsolete. But then again, relying on a constant stream of innovation to keep our economy from collapsing seems like a losing battle. And also, lately technology is all about making rich people richer and poor people poorer. So much for hope.
Why you can't compete with Google? It is a monopoly, but there are some competitors (Bing, DuckDuckGo). One misstep from Google, and its monopoly is lost.
You can't seriously claim Bing and DuckDuckGo are competition.
Bing only survives because Microsoft has deep pockets, a result of their monopolies and huge war chest of course. It now powers Yahoo's Search (since their own search engine is long dead) and DuckDuckGo. You see, DDG is nothing more than a glorified UI over Bing's infrastructure.
And no, competing with Google Search isn't possible, unless you're Microsoft and like to play pretend.
You don't think that Google search enjoys being on hundreds of million devices?
Remember 1999-2001 when Google unseated Yahoo from the king of search? It was a feat that seemed impossible when you had established search engines like Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Excite, DogPile, etc. all competing in the space.
As with most industries and its enterprises, you'll always have an event horizon and then singularity until markets are saturated and the industry becomes irrelevant to the consumer.
I remember 1999-2001 very well. Google Search won because the alternatives sucked. Not sure how many people here have lived or remember those alternatives, like Yahoo or Altavista, but they sucked so badly that people were routinely looking for alternatives in the hope of something better to come along. When I first saw the Google logo on a screen in an Internet Cafe, I was an instant conversion because I was searching for software development material and wasn't able to find anything I wanted, searches being mostly a game of luck, patience and suffering from horrible UIs.
But here's the problem: in 2000 there was no dominant design for search engines, so the market was still open for competition. The biggest problem is that right now Google Search is the dominant design. Google won because they changed how a search engine looked, felt and functioned. Nowadays though, people want and expect Google for searches. It's a verb you know. Then webmasters in turn are optimizing their websites for Google's crawler, which in turn ensures that Google always has an edge. And you can't beat them at their own game, because they have the mindshare and the resources to keep ahead.
> ...until markets are saturated and the industry becomes irrelevant to the consumer
I don't think search will ever be irrelevant, but that was my other point. Technological innovation is the only natural force that breaks monopolies, but relying on constant technological innovation means our economy, our way of life, isn't sustainable.
> [Bing] now powers ... DuckDuckGo. You see, DDG is nothing more than a glorified UI over Bing's infrastructure.
Citation needed, as they claim they pull in from a number of sources, one of them including Bing. "A glorified UI over Bing" seems like a bit of a stretch, but if that's actually true, it would be good to know.
Railroads are doomed anyway (except maybe cargo, though self-driving trucks can change that), when London to Paris plane ticket can bought for £30. Lost cause.
This is possible because railroads are hierarchical, and all other means of travel are point-to-point. Networks always win against hierarchies.
No. This notion originated in the theory of none other than Vladimir Lenin, who took Marx framework and extended it. See his famous "Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism" essay.
While this essay is not without merit, I doubt that Lenin can be counted as the expert on what capitalism is.
"Lenin had that idea and Lenin was a bad guy" isn't a real argument on why you disagree with the idea. Please explain why, I'm actually interested in understanding your point of view.
Because using government power (and physical force in general) to coerce people into using some product or service isn't a free market anymore, and therefore isn't capitalism. In the US (arguably still the freest economy in the world), there is no free market in healthcare, education, and other heavily regulated sectors — not without the influence of current market monopolies willing to keep the status quo.
So, Lenin was right in that capitalism can easily evolve into government cronyism if left unchecked. But then it isn't capitalism anymore.
>>Because using government power (and physical force in general) to coerce people into using some product or service isn't a free market anymore, and therefore isn't capitalism.
This is precisely what British East India Company did in India.
>>So, Lenin was right in that capitalism can easily evolve into government cronyism if left unchecked. But then it isn't capitalism anymore.
Capitalism or Communism, the issue is accumulation of a lot of power in a few hands. Once that happens, things are basically done for the benefit of a few banks/dictators/rulers and then things start going downhill from there.
I've yet to find a single instance of a coercive monopoly in history that wasn't enforced by a mechanism akin to royal patents.
It doesn't help that much of the written record on which belief in the existence of coercive monopolies was based came from the Hearst newspapers - which were a sort of monopoly ( or at least a rather large amalgamation ).
> Capitalism is free competitive markets and inability to lobby the government into protecting coercive monopolies
Isn't more the definition of classical liberalism rather than capitalism as an economical system ? Because you could argue that China's economy is capitalist yet there is virtually no difference between the state and most of the Chinese industry.
Capitalism is far from perfect. And treating capitalism as if it should be perfect is exactly what causes people to move away from it.
Capitalism isn't perfect. it's just the best we have given the alternatives.
There is no "perfect system" in the same way that there is no "perfect algorithm", unless you can define the goal.
What is the best sorting algorithm? Is it the one that sorts a random list in the shortest time? Or the one that uses the least memory? Most likely we'll pick by balancing a few important metrics, which leaves us with "optimal". Far from perfect.
If we're discussing Capitalism vs Socialism, instead of criticizing the opposition for ignorance (like every comment below the WashPo story), let's accept that different groups are optimizing for different goals. And there are so many competing objectives: efficient distribution of wealth, national economic growth, safety net for unlucky/disadvantaged, protecting shared resources (environment), etc etc etc.
> Capitalism is not the perfect system, it's better than the alternatives
This is really not generally true. I would gladly take socialism in the Czechoslovakia over capitalism in some third world country (say Pinochet's Chile). Capitalism worked very well in the West after the WWII, but that system had strong elements of socialism, too. But it's important to realize that for many third world countries, capitalism was not a success.
On the other hand, what was generally successful was democratic governance (maybe with exception of India and China). This is often conflated with (real world) capitalism (and dictatorship with socialism). But they really are pretty much orthogonal ideological axes.
I general anything works fine as long you are the monopoly. If every country in the world would be a capitalist nation, then it will be back to the same donkey slogging for everybody.
>>On the other hand, what was generally successful was democratic governance (maybe with exception of India and China).
As an Indian, Let me tell you. It is actually quite successful in India. Issues in India have more to do social-cultural set up of the society than anything else. You don't change these sort of things with change in governance and economic systems.
Free market/Communism/Socialism aren't panacea. One needs to stop looking them as hammers and all problems as nails.
There is the question of what we mean by capitalism.
Is capitalism simply the state of affairs of contemporary Western society?
In that case, capitalism includes things like labor unions, state regulations, corruption, etc. So the word refers to a very dynamic and tumultuous process involving constant struggle between opposing forces.
That's never going to be a "perfect system" of course. What we think of as opposition to capitalism is then a big part of how the system regulates itself.
But maybe capitalism is more correctly thought of as a certain set of forces and structures operating in the larger state of affairs.
For example, capitalism is whatever is advocated for by those who own and manage concentrated capital. Then, too, opposing this should be natural for anyone who doesn't belong to that class and doesn't expect to.
I'm just saying that the concept "capitalism" deserves analysis if we want to talk about whether it's good or bad and to what degree "we" should oppose it or try to change it.
"I used to be “with it”, but then they changed what “it” was and now what I'm “with” isn't “it” and what's “it” seems weird and scary to me. IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU"[0]
"Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong."[1]
You can own private property and run business in all these countries.
I was born in USSR. Socialism there meant that private business ownership is definitely not allowed. As many other things, too. It was impossible to buy and sell real estate, for example.
Exactly. I was commenting on how those are not real examples of socialism - you can own property in Venezuela for example. North Korea is more of an example of a dictatorship than anything else.
Trying to sell the black/white view of capitalism/communism to millenials proves to be a hard sell. People travel, they see social democracies in europe and elsewhere and begin to doubt capitalism. I think american media is adapting very slowly to the underlying realities behind the rise of Bernie sanders.
The article is about rejecting capitalism, not about rejecting free markets. Regarding europe at large, including france and even UK to some extent, the difference between american style capitalism and social democracy is whether the Capitalists or the Democracy have primacy in the society. It's not about choosing exclusively one of the two.
The government should not be involved in the market in the first place , other than ensuring fair play (through simple, enforceable regulations, primarily to ensure transparency and prevent monopolies/duopolies and). No government bailouts for anybody. No corporate "lobbyists". Etc.
They see social democracies in Europe, and cherry pick the policies they like (broad government spending), ignoring the ones that actually allow Europe to generate enough wealth to support their welfare states.
Also - something to realize about Europe:
The poor in the US are RICHER than middle class in much of europe.
"A person at 60% of median income in the US still has a larger income than the median household in Chile, Czech Rep., Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and several others. And the poverty income in the US is very close to matching the median income in Italy, Japan, Spain, and the UK."
While that may be true, I would speculate that due to higher spending on social programs, the European poor enjoy I higher quality of life than their American counterparts. Don't discount things like tax-funded transportation, healthcare, and education, and the luxury of not maintaining a massive standing military.
Hmm, lower incomes where health care and university is provided by the government, higher income where it is not.
And if you take the cost of health care and university out of the US statistics, do you think they would remain higher?
back of the envelope math says no:
Its less than 10 thousand dollars higher, US health care is estimated at 5k per person on average. Given that these are household incomes youd have to multiply that by average family size, which is like 2.3 people
Its 2.3*5000 more expensive to have healthcare per family in the US
That already has wiped out the entirety of the 10k gap.
If you include free university it is even more one sided.
You are comparing pears with apples, because you assume those numbers are net values after all taxes which is not true. Europeans usually pay ~80% of they gross GDP/capita at some form of tax (health insurance (personal + company level), income tax, VAT, mandatory pension plan, extras on petrol and alcohols, duty fee, etc.
There's always gonna be endless debate about terms...
Let's just say that what I call communism is what happened in Russia. And that it was supposed to be an intermediary step toward socialism. The idea was State owned means of production ==> totally democratic ownership everyone is free no need for a state bliss
And this is why people "don't know what capitalism is" and "don't know what communism is". Different people take the words to mean something different.
For a lot of people, "communism" is little more than a synonym for "authoritarian kleptocracy".
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As the phrases are actually used in Leninist theory, the goal was stateless communism. Socialism was an intermediary stage between capitalism and communism accurately described by Lenin, who invented the concept, as "state capitalism".
A "dictatorship of the proletariat" would take over capitalism's economic and political infrastructure and support the citizenry until a transition to true communism was possible. To the surprise of nobody who owned a history book, it turned out the dictatorship came to be corrupted by a ruler with no real interest in communism, but plenty of interest in being a dictator.
It's worth noting that Marx didn't advocate any particular method of transitioning from capitalism to communism, because Marx wasn't, precisely, a revolutionary. He regarded the transition as simply an inevitable consequence of capitalism's failings.
You don't seem to understand Krugman, or perhaps it is the broken window fallacy itself. Krugman is not advocating redirecting spending from one use to another (i.e. buying glass instead of buying bread).
Krugman is advocating increasing budget deficits and printing more money to increase aggregate demand. There is a very obvious increase in the amount of money in circulation in the economy in this case.
Do you know how "printing money" works in the US? And why it doesn't create much inflation? It is impossible to create new money for additional spending from thin air; but it seems that it is possible to bring them from future, specifically, from future taxes (since the government doesn't produce much).
Sure, we could all benefit from more broadband competition (and less regulatory barriers to entry from local governments). But would you really prefer the alternative of governments providing internet services instead?
That argument assumes that there are only two ways to organize productive activity: capitalist profit-seeking corporations or national governments. Anarchist thought, for example, rejects that premise.
Municipal ISPs work just fine. Governments already provide (or contract with private businesses to provide) mail, electricity, water, sewage, garbage collection, roads, etc.
In an area that already has adequate service competition and coverage I don't see any reason they would want to run a municipal ISP. But state-wide laws that inhibit municipal ISPs, in order to protect the current ISP duopoly status quo, don't make sense either.
It's not like it's something that requires new taxes to run. And many utilities already have to run their own networks anyway.
my comment was meant to negate the idea that a person can not oppose aspects of something if they at all partake in that something. engaging in capitalism -- creating a product, buying food, owning an iPhone -- is a decent indicator for how a person would like to live but that doesn't mean the system that enables their current lifestyle is the one they would choose to participate in.
Don't be quick to dismiss them as ignorants. Just looking at the markets the past few years, how they are and how they react, it doesn't seem like capitalism is trustworthy. There is no direction and often no reason behind it. If capitalism is a means to achieve national interests, it's not clear whose interests it serves anymore, it's too globalized.
Capitalism serves the interests of all market participants, including general public. As every consumer-faced business owner knows, rich and well-developed middle class is absolutely necessary for good sales and healthy profits.
"National interests" don't care about public welfare. They only care about outcompeting other nation states, both in wartime and peacetime. Public interests are routinely sacrificed by governments for the sake of such competition.
Anything that gives an actor power over other actors – so everything that includes a monopoly, and where actors can’t switch to competitors without moving into another area – is better left to an administration of that area, usually a state, federation, etc.
Middle class is currently far from being dissolved. Jobs are still there, salaries are paid, taxes are collected.
As for "what caused the crisis of jobs and industrial society", the answer is of course automation (this is one thing where Marx was right). The full-blown crisis was imminent 100 years ago (which is why socialist regimes appeared), but it was delayed by two world wars (there are no unemployed in wartime), the Cold war, and rise of the clerks / bureaucracy.
Socialism was Marx's answer to the idea of automation of production, but it didn't work out 100 years ago. It will not work now as well. We have to think of something new.
> They are, in fact, two different things: capitalism is a system of ownership; markets a method of exchange. Although the two have sometimes gone together, this need not be so. Crony capitalism in which a few monopolies or cartels run much of the economy gives us capitalism without markets. And market socialism would give us markets without capitalism*.
Word "free" in "free market" refers to choice of producers by consumers and competition. You can conceivably have that even if there is a restriction on capital accumulation.
"Free market" is a technical term in economics - for a very idealized situation that hardly ever occurs in practice, and just happens to be simple to analyze. Its meaning isn't a matter of opinion.
Yes. Markets are a method of exchange, and free markets have a choice of producers by consumers and competition. Restrictions (or lack thereof) on capital accumulation are not relevant.
I don't see how the state could implement restrictions on capital accumulation, without regulating certain markets and industries (primarily the financial industry).
For a market to exist, it must facilitate trading of things that have value. When value is lost and a market no longer possible due to the environment, is that really a restriction?
In other words, if the state placed restrictions on capital accumulation, then there wouldn't be a need to restrict the "financial industry" as such a thing would cease to exist. Just like how a fish market wouldn't be possible without any fish left on earth.
The freedom of the free market doesn't denote the universal freedom of its participants, but rather the freedom of the participants to agree on the price of goods without interference. That's the only specific freedom guaranteed to a free market. e.g. One is not usually free to trade stolen goods in a free market.
In economic theory, capital is that which can be combined with labour to produce money. It is the "means of production". It isn't just any money, or just any accumulation of goods.
In a socialist free market, the vendors can set their prices, and the consumers can choose which prices they'll accept, and/or negotiate a better deal, just like any normal free market. The only (necessary) difference is that the capital - i.e. the means by which the goods being traded were produced - is communally owned.
One possible policy is all consumers get the same basic income, and vendors - in the form of worker collectives - are given control over capital by lot or election. Profit would be reinvested in the capital, and/or returned to the state to be redistributed.
The consequences are similar. With enough vendors and consumers, prices would tend to the marginal cost of goods. Vendors who consistently fail to sell their goods at or above cost will, rather than running out of capital, have their control over the shared capital taken away by the state/community (e.g. via a recall process).
Instead of looking at capitalism vs. socialism, I think it would make more sense to look at free markets vs. unfree markets. Many businesses will lobby politicians for laws and regulations to protect themselves against competition, for subsidies, for special tax deductions etc. Private banks cooperate with the government in order to create fiat money, which primarily benefit those who are already rich etc.
You can certainly have capitalism and an unfree market at the same time. Guess that's called crony capitalism. It's a very different beast from a free market.
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery." -Keynes
Ironically it is (a distorted version of) Keynesian economics that is used to justify inflationism as public policy
Schumpeter would add, the middle class will then reject capitalism (presumably instead of placing the blame where it truly ought to lie).
In a surreal turn of events the east coast of communist China has the strongest "pure" form of capitalism currently in existence. This has a lot to do with their scant regard of imaginary property, what westerners insist on calling "intellectual property". Capitalism only work when information flows freely. When people can make decisions based on facts. This cannot happen when information is hoarded as a so called competitive advantage, not in the long run anyway, not any more. Ad to this the degree of rent-taking on all levels and its clear that capitalism as we know it a spent vein.
that is what young people do. 99 years ago they rejected capitalism in my old country. ~70 years ago - in China, and 20 years later during Cultural Revolution the next generation of young people in China doubled down on that rejection sending the first generation into re-education camps... "Mistakes of youth" :)
US version of the same i guess is "If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain"
Personally, at 43, born and grown in socialist USSR, having lived through transition to wild capitalism in 199x in Russia, and living in US for 16+ years, i'd rephrase Churchill - "capitalism is the worst economical system, except for all the others".
oh yes! i specifically mentioned wild capitalism of 199x in Russia which i immigrated from. Though it isn't about balance as a goal or a tool. It is just that the human civilization has learned through direct experience that capitalism is the most productive system while it most glaring deficiencies can be corrected [and those corrections happen to actually increase the productivity of the system] by government enforcing the rules to manage tragedies of commons and providing the things like education/medicine/welfare.
A man who has not been a socialist before 25 has no heart. If he remains one after 25 he has no head. — King Oscar II of Sweden
Whilst that's a variant of an older quote there is generally an expectation that 19/20 year olds are going to be more revolutionary than their elders. As a 30 year old who grew up during the 90s capitalism had vanquished communism and was rapidly improving quality of life around the world. Economic growth was assumed and student radicalism went through one of its quieter patches and began to focus much more on equalities and access rather than economic issues.
Today's youth are perhaps returning back to a more traditional model of rebellion against their parents. Be it the 1930s elite becoming communist at Cambridge, French students in the 60s or US students in 1970.
This article doesn't seem to suggest a widespread adoption of socialist ideology as much as a thorough dissatisfaction with the reality of capitalism today.
It'd be surprising to me if a majority of polled youths did support "capitalism" given the state of affairs (impending climate doom, eternal crisis, unemployment, corruption, inequality).
Alternatively, a rebellion against a system that screwed our parents (loss of labor jobs, mortgage crises) and is now screwing us (student loans, mass youth unemployment, climate change).
Capitalism did a lot of good and then in order to really juice it for everything it had, we let it run wild. Now we're seeing the pendulum swing back. So we agree there, but I don't think it's a matter of youthful rebellion. It's the only logical stance for our generation to take.
From the Sanders/Clinton age divide apparent in exit polls, we might deduce that somewhere between 40 and 50 is the new 25. And to me that makes some sense. Baby boomers grew up in a world where you could get a decent paying blue collar job for life, and buy a house on a single income. You can afford to be individualist when you have that level of security. Young people today don't feel they have that and are looking for an alternative.
Rejection of the current crony capitalism doesn't imply socialism.
A right winger can dislike how it makes markets lazy through government protection, and making entry and exit difficult.
A left winger can criticise the inefficiency of outcomes in monopolistic markets, and the unfairness of outcomes based on initial endowments.
The current status quo is very traditional: those in charge take every opportunity to enrich themselves either legally, illegally or by rigging the law.
This reminds me of my own version of a certain Churchill quote: "Capitalism is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have ever been tried."
Seriously though, as others have pointed out, what we have in the US isn't so much capitalism as crony capitalism: privatized profit with socialized risk. Much of the anti-capitalism/pro-socialism crowd fails to make that distinction, or equates all capitalism with cronyism. Another overlapping portion simply live in a world entirely of theory (social theory, not economic theory), and are historically naive and uninformed about the fact that radical socialism has been tried many times, and had considerably worse failure modes than capitalism has shown thus far.
They reject capitalism because capitalism has been turned into "crony capitalism". They hate big corporations, because big corporations go out and buy politicians who then pass favorable laws only for those corporations, but not necessarily favorable to the people as well.
If this didn't happen so pervasively I don't think millennials would be that mad about capitalism. To fix this, bring back real democracy in the US (and I mean that as a generic "People's voice must be heard" term, not as direct democracy or mob rule, as many often misconstrue such comments).
Where do we really have (free market) capitalism in the world?
I once read something about how traffic works best when 100% regulated or 0% regulated. Everything in the middle is sub-optimal. That's what we seeing with capitalism at the moment. Everything is half-regulated. There are many people who got a big part of the global wealth and many of them inherited it from people that had it before the world switched away from kings and queens.
Seriously, this is stupid. It's a poll about words, not really about politics.
I'm sure almost all would agree that either complete capitalism or complete socialism would be bad. Everyone actually agrees that there needs to be a balance.
One word that is conspicuously absent from this articles and the comments so far, is "SCARCITY". Both socialism and capitalism are systems designed to deal with scarcity (and often, to generate it as well, since as systems, (and the stake holders in those systems), they benefit from scarcity.
The problem we have now is to establish a new system (or systems), to deal with abondance, or at least greatly reduced scarcity. If the stakeholders of the old systems don't prevent us, eg. by declaring a very destructive WWIII.
I am in favor of socialism, and if I was forced to choose between "socialism" and "capitalism" on a survey I would pick socialism. But this does not mean I reject capitalism. I am generally in favor of free markets and private property. But I want taxes on externalities (eg. pollution), and I want enough wealth redistribution to prevent the kind of extreme inequality we see in America and similar countries. Countries generally considered capitalist already have some taxation and wealth redistribution. The question of "capitalist" as the article calls it vs. "socialist" is a matter of degree, not a binary choice. I think we should move further towards the socialist side, but that does not mean I want a centrally planned economy and everybody to have exactly the same wealth.
The benefit of switching between systems is that power will be redistributed. The current problem is that organisations who previously offered superior value, are now abusing their position.
And why shouldn't they? Capitalism, as we have it, has given them a huge amount of debt right out of school, impossibly expensive housing, declining real wages, unemployment-hidden-as-not-seeking-work, almost non-existent family formation and backbreaking healthcare costs.
I'm an instinctive libertarian, but how can you look at the current state of affairs and expect anything else?
Capitalism killed democracy and now technology is killing capitalism. Once technology is fully embraced, capitalism will seem archaic and cumbersome. In capitalism money rules. In democratic socialism utility rules. Take your pic.
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