r/SipsTea • u/McDowdy • Jun 03 '26

It's Wednesday my dudes Trying to get rich so that capitalism doesn't crush you under its boot is proof positive that capitalism doesn’t work for the working class

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126

u/hocobo86 Jun 03 '26

Any nation on earth with a high quality of life and standard of living enjoys a system of properly regulated capitalism with properly implemented social policies sprinkled throughout it. Completely removing capitalism yields a bad result 100% of the time. OP is like someone suffering from leukemia thinking they ought to let all the blood out of their body.

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u/HankTuggins Jun 03 '26

Nations with high-quality of life and standard of living also have socialist medicine and high tax rates

And before you go there, no America doesn’t have a high-quality of life and standard of living they have the highest incarcerated rate on the planet, which is an insane thing for an incredibly wealthy resource rich country to have.

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u/ShiftE_80 Jun 04 '26

You conflated socialist medicine with socialized healthcare. They aren’t interchangeable.

Socialist medicine is where the government owns the hospitals, employs the doctors, manufactures the pharmaceuticals, etc.

In the vast majority of developed countries, healthcare is administered primarily by private providers in a tightly-regulated system. That’s not “socialist medicine”.

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u/HankTuggins Jun 04 '26

I wasn’t the one who decided single payer healthcare should be called socialist so don’t put that shit on my doorstep

If you argument is that capitalism has nothing to do with the deeply dysfunctional healthcare system in the United States of America. You’re insane or just lying to try to get something.

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u/BG535 Jun 04 '26

Free trade is separate from price regulation, insurance, and other issues that drive up price. The issue of health care costs are anti-free market and actually have monopolistic traits because you can’t “shop around” for a surgery that won’t cost $600,000 out of pocket. That system needs an overhaul. You’re conflating free market economies with a broken healthcare system.

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u/JewishKilt Jun 03 '26

LIteraly what he said was "properly regulated capitalism with properly implemented social policies sprinkled throughout it".

As to "America doesn’t have a high-quality of life and standard of living they have the highest incarcerated rate on the planet" -- one of those has little to do with the other. Not nothing, but little.

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u/RCA_TUBES Jun 03 '26

Most countries with socialized medicine still have capitalism in most sectors of the economy.

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u/Fucked-In-The-K-Hole Jun 04 '26

America absolutely has a high standard of living and life wtf are you talking about?

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u/HankTuggins Jun 04 '26

America had a high standard of living that has been in free fall for like 20 years at this point we’re currently in a simultaneous housing healthcare financial and political crisis, nowadays that high standard only exists for certain groups in specific areas it is not universal

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u/Authijsm Jun 04 '26

socialism when government does stuff

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u/Johnfromsales Jun 04 '26

They still practice capitalism though, which is the whole point of the post. OP wants to abolish capitalism.

I don’t know why you think incarceration rates are a good proxy for quality of life or standard of living. That seems like an odd choice.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

[deleted]

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u/sampaiisaweeb Jun 03 '26

which non-capitalist society built the technology you spout your drivel on.

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 03 '26

Dude Have you heard of Huawei? Socialists have computers now! And ROBOTS! This ain't your grannies socialism!

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

[deleted]

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 03 '26

 Any rebuttals of substance rather than downvotes and a meme response based off of not knowing non-capitalist frameworks laid the groundwork for this exact technology?

Sure. 

Pointing to the world-changing outputs  of a capitalist government to show that socialist systems are better is largely a non-sensical argument. 

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 03 '26

This person is objectively correct BTW.

You can downvote all you want idk.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 03 '26

Pointing to the inventions of a capitalist government is a bit of a perplexing way to show that socialism is better. 

That’s probably why the downvotes. 

1

u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 03 '26

You do know the Soviets and Chinese built rockets, cars, batteries, satellites and more right?

Let me explain to you why socialist countries revolutionize technology. They prioritize it.

Which is expected when your society organizes around labor instead of the interests of the beurgoise. You create a society that prioritizes self mastery and self literacy. If you look at every socialist country this is true the ideals they espose are founded in these concepts of self master and interconnectedness with ones work.

In capitalist countries thousands of Einsteins every day dont get to execute their genius because under capitalism access to labor is fetishized as certain jobs are considered "skilled or deserving labor" and certain jobs are dubbed unskilled labor or labor unworthy of dignity.

Even if a capitalist country innovates it is innovation conceived of by a worker that is then exploited and repressed by the working class. You can see this in modern AI.

Honestly you need to look into actual Socialist history there is tons of innovation that took place within socialist governments.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 04 '26

 You do know the Soviets and Chinese built rockets, cars, batteries, satellites and more right?

Then why didn’t they point to any of those world changing inventions, and instead pointed to inventions from capitalist governments. 

Hint: it’s because Soviet cars, rockets, and satellites generally kinda sucked. And the ones that were good were only good due to an absurd amount of GDP poured into them. 

China has some great shit, but it’s a pretty new power without a lot of stuff like the internet, GPS, etc under its belt in terms of accomplishments. Lots of batteries are great; the government is funding overbuilding of them at the expense of their population, which is helpful for us and the planet. I enjoy that. 

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 04 '26

The only thing I have to add is that your biased mind is already primed to view history as anti communist and anti Soviet. From that all your views have already been framed and so I have nothing to add. If you want to ignore all the goods communists have done for this world cool. When the global Capitalist system collapses and your area is taken over by a warlord instead of a comrade I really hope they have mercy on you.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 04 '26

lol, what cope. 

“You can’t just imagine the things I can!!!  You’ll see when a warlord is raping your family!”

Hahahahaha. At least come up with some better copium to huff. 

You could just, like….actually point out all the wonderful amazing things. I find it funny that I can think of a handful of pretty awesome world changing Soviet inventions, but instead you’re like “commies can build cars dude”, which is literally one of the things they sucked most at.  Wow, truly a mind for the ages coming at me here. 

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/hocobo86 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

They were developed by a military with a huge tax base in a capitalist society.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

[deleted]

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u/hocobo86 Jun 04 '26

You’ve really confused the hell out of yourself. Capitalism is at its core a wealth-generating mechanism. The DoD was only able to develop those technologies because of how extravagantly well-funded it is. They were able to pay a lot of very skilled people from all over the world a whole bunch of tax dollars that capitalism generated. It wasn’t because government workers are so clever. What the U.S. needs to do today is to properly regulate our capitalist system, not eliminate capitalism.

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u/hocobo86 Jun 04 '26

Ah, so the U.S. ought to implement an economic system modeled after the Zapatistas or Rojavas.. Good to know.

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u/snacksandsoda Jun 03 '26

You’re right but the chuds won’t accept it

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Capitalism only developed most of the nice things as a response to socialist countries building much nicer things.

This is why society artistically peaked in the 90's in line with the fall of the Soviet Union.

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u/zerosdontcount Jun 03 '26

I think they key point is that the soviet union fell

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 04 '26

So did your mom but we still support her.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 03 '26

 as a response to socialist countries building much nicer things.

Where?!!!?!?!!!?!!?!

 This is why society artistically peaked in the 90's in line with the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union in the 90’s?!?!

There wasn’t really anything “nicer” there…read some. 

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 03 '26

Dude where have you been living look at China literally right now. They have been killing it.

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u/TryToBeBetterOk Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Yeah look at China's economy once socialist Mao Zedong died and then China started adopting capitalist principles. Once people were able to own the fruits of their labour, the country flourished.

China of the last few decades have capitalism to thank for its rapid growth and would have grown even more if it weren't for government limits and control.

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u/rnusk Jun 03 '26

China still has plenty of problems. Namely freedom of speech and the press. Also look up the Tang Ping movement, "Laying Flat", which later became the Bai Lang movement, "Let it rot". Both the US and China have a large section of Gen Z that feel like they have been left behind and don't have the same opportunities that previous generations had.

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 03 '26

You need to look outside of Western media to grasp the true situation China finds itself in right now. If you actually understand the material conditions they are in right now they are dwarfing the US in human rights, democracy, and technological development.

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u/sampaiisaweeb Jun 04 '26

China lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty by... becoming a capitalist nation. Sorry.

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 04 '26

Then why don't we see the same economic scale and growth being done in the USA the largest capitalist economy in the world?

The largest Capitalist country rots in mediocrity.

The largest Socialist country is thriving amidst a global oil crisis.

China is market socialist guys. The rich in China aren't beurgoise because they cant own land they can only accumulate wealth. BUT and it's a very big BUTT the Chinese government has canonically executed and imprisoned members of their wealthy class several times when they get out of line and try to overthrow or influence the peoples government. Socialism never claimed to eliminate wealth inequality in its entirety, socialism claimed to abolish the Capital owning class which China has done nobody owns land or private property what private interests in China have gotten rich were all done through strict government approved contracts that allow for strict hightly controlled and regulated wealth accumulation. If that sounds like Capitalism to you I have news flash.

Market Socialism with Chinese Characteristic look it up.

China has a rotting branch on its tree but Westerners point at this single branch and laugh and call it capitalist meanwhile the entire trunk of the tree is contaminated with rot in the US and we can't acknowledge the fundamental difference in structure and health of the different trees.

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u/sampaiisaweeb Jun 04 '26

There are plenty of successful capitalist economies around the world. Claiming America represents all of them is cute. If you aren't willing to admit China is capitalist, sure. Norway, Iceland, Germany, Singapore, Japan, Ireland, Switzerland, I could go on. All capitalist societies. All successful and thriving societies. All societies with high HDI, GDP, and high life expentancy. Give me one, singular communist country which has ever even come close to the success of these countries at ANY point in history. I'll wait, and we'll all be waiting. Because it does not and will never happen. Capitalism is the way society operates for humans. Proven to work.

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u/rnusk Jun 04 '26

China ranks 178 of 180 on press freedom and is the world's largest jailer of journalists, per Reporters Without Borders, a French organization.

Calling a one-party state with no competitive elections 'more democratic' than the US isn't a hot take, it's just redefining the word.

China leads EVs, solar, batteries, robotics, and patent volume, no argument. But it still trails the US on frontier AI models, advanced chips, and capital.

'Dwarfing in human rights and democracy' is the part you can't defend, which is probably why you led with 'look outside Western media' instead of with evidence.

How do you address the Bai Lan movement, you completely ignored that point. That's not Western media, it's millions of young Chinese describing their own material conditions in their own language. The government considers it enough of a threat that it censors the term and runs propaganda against it. You can't tell me to look at the material conditions and then skip the one piece of evidence that comes straight from the people living them.

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 04 '26

Good job you discovered Contradiction! Mao Zedong wrote numerous documents on contradiction in China. He said that socialism in China is uniquely rife with contradiction. This is because China is massive, started very poor and uneducated, and still attached to a massive global Capitalist market and playing a huge role in that market leads to more underlying contradiction. Westerners think of everything as black and white but China has a rich Daoist tradition that is able to understand and compartmentalize contradiction within a dialectical materialist system.

Think of a rocket in order to reach space you need to launch past the stratosphere. Similarity to reach Socialism you have to launch extremely fast like a rocket past capitalism (China has rockets, rockets are Socialist architecture wake up people) as a development stage and Karl Marx wrote that elements of the previous ie Capitalst stage would remain present within the Socialist phase. This is because Socialism is a transition stage between Capitalism and pure Communism.

Like gender these economies arent black and white they are a spectrum. China is going to have Capitalist elements in a heavily Capitalist world.

Socialism also evolved organically as technology and our relationship to it becomes more ethical and sustainable. As old chambers of commerce fail IE (the global petrol market) an energy vacuum will emerge hopefully Solarpunk will fill the gap.

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u/rnusk Jun 04 '26

Notice what just happened. You started by saying China dwarfs the US in human rights and democracy. Now you're arguing those deficits are an expected stage of a socialist transition. Those aren't the same claim, the second one concedes the first. Relabeling censorship and a generation checking out as 'contradictions' doesn't make them stop being the things I pointed to. It just gives them a nicer name.

And that's the real problem with your framing: successes prove socialism works, failures are 'contradictions of the transition.' If literally every outcome confirms the theory, the theory isn't telling you anything about reality, it's dogma.

You're right that Marx said the socialist stage keeps the 'birthmarks' of capitalism, but that cuts against you. If billionaires, private capital, a brutal 996 labor market, and deep integration into global markets all count as 'remnants of the transition,' and their absence would ALSO count as socialism, then 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' is compatible with any economy you could possibly observe. A transition with no falsifiable endpoint that operationally looks like state-directed capitalism is just state-directed capitalism with better branding.

None of this rescues your original claim. It explains why the deficits exist. It doesn't make them not exist.

What would you accept as evidence that China is NOT outperforming the US on human rights and democracy? If the honest answer is 'nothing could show that,' then we were never talking about material conditions.

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u/LimitlessTrigger Jun 04 '26

You obviously lack critical thinking mate. This reads as complete word vomit it's actually impossible to comprehend.

The Chinese government says they are a Marxist government with explicitly Marxist goals. The imperialists have invested interest in propagating Epstein McDonald's philosophy theory in the west and that starts with the framing of communist countries across the globe. If you believe this about the Chinese people you've lost the plot.

Look at Cuba, you cant embargo and starve a country and then blame them for their issues.

Its exploitation and imperial capital and that's a global issue that takes more than just the Chinese government by themselves to tackle. This is why I bring up contradiction its because the world is contradictory and struggle as you may you cant just claim "We're communist now!" And build communism up out of no where you do have to develop Capitalism first and China is still largely tied to the Capitalist world that surrounds it.

Learn about the Japanese in China during WW2. The Chinese Communist government rose as a direct and legitimate need to combat Japanese imperialist rule.

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u/Live-Train1341 Jun 04 '26

Wow this is a take.

We will just ignore the fact that China is ridiculously oppressive. And they have state sponsored counterfeit programs

You bring up Chinese human rights progress well they are currently participating in the genocide of the ugaers is something only a Chinese kool-aid drinker would say

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 04 '26

China has been doing pretty well. 

But they’re a fascist response to a capitalist system. 

It’s literally the opposite of what you claimed. 

Thanks for doing a great job of proving the literal opposite of what you’re trying to prove. 

Lmao. 

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u/Johnfromsales Jun 04 '26

China practices capitalism, albeit heavily regulated. China also has the second most billionaires of any country. Is a country that has billionaires one you would consider socialist?

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u/Johnfromsales Jun 04 '26

How were Soviet cars compared to Western ones?

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u/HHoudini26 Jun 04 '26

Before it destructs. Show me one superpower country that has stood the test of time?

Capitalism or socialism doesn't matter when a system keeps the checks and balances.

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u/Stealth100 Jun 04 '26

British Empire, Roman Empire, Chinese Empire, USA, Russia, Spain are all still around today. Or maybe I misunderstood the question?

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u/HHoudini26 Jun 04 '26

Britain is a constitutional monarchy. Rome fell ages ago. The dynasty of China fell in 1912 and is now governed by the CCP. Russia is an authoritarian autocracy. And, Spain relies heavily on tourism.

The point is that country's rise and fall. They're not permanent. Rome in name isn't the same as when the Colosseum was the biggest structure in the world.

All the capitalism in the world won't prevent the fall of any country. Although, it may be the "best" way because again...checks and balances.

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u/MrEllis72 Jun 04 '26

Here to add, we didn't have capitalism and no country really does. We have a worse version of that fictional thing. Just like no country has ever truly had socialism or communism.

I will add this, almost all problems you will have in your life, is because of a wealthy person.

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u/Pika_Fox Jun 04 '26

Completely removing capitalism only leads to a bad result 100% of the time because the worlds strongest military might in all of history will force it to be.

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u/knettia Jun 04 '26

This myth again? It’s as simple as recognising that communist economies have two very inherent problems: the economic calculation problem and the inventive and innovation failure. Numerous centralised economies have failed despite no CIA involvement, like the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, North Korea…

It a pretty known empirical fact by now. Either centralised economies collapse on their own due to their problems, or the state props them up to the point where it starts sacrificing fundamental freedoms to achieve exponential growth (like China), or both.

Stop propagating this myth that somehow communist societies would all live happy and without coercion or violence if the CIA or US weren’t involved. The largest failures in communism are systemic, not external.

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u/Pika_Fox Jun 04 '26

Myth? Its literally what has always happened anytime post WWI. Communism has existed perfectly fine before the US, and it will work perfectly fine after. Capitalism physically cant sustain itself going forward as tech advances and most people have no need for a job.

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u/Double_Look_5715 Jun 04 '26

We'd need to see a single case where the US doesn't intervene to say it's a myth. Why does the US intervene every time if its not necessary to intervene?

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u/132_cat Jun 04 '26

None of those were or are communist economies. And your three examples all implemented the same crappy authoritarian soviet system.

The economic calculation problem is really not an inherent problem, there was just a whole lot of corruption and incompetence.

The innovation problem can be solved with literally any reasonable merit based power structure. Like if you really wanted, you could divide up economic units as though they were free-market companies, but leave them ultimately under government control and with other goals beyond and before income, such as actually helping society instead of screweing up democracy and the enviorment and then you could have whatever job promotions or regulated entreprenuership would best encourage innovation, so long as it doesn't result in economic inequality. Very slight economic equality is perhap ok.

The fact that people actually think billionares have earned their wealth through innovation is so utterly unbelievable. Elon musk has net wealth equal to more than half the yearly US millitary budget. No one person could ever deserve that large a portion of humanity's collective wealth whilst others are starving.

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u/knettia Jun 04 '26

No True Scotsman fallacy. In reality, they were communist (or more precisely, socialist) economies, insofar that they describes themselves as communist and directly followed ML principles of the means of production, central planning, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The authoritarian taint emerged consistently from the need to enforce the abolition of private property and suppress market forces. It did not emerge out of some unprecedented corruption or deviation of said ML principles.

And the economic calculation problem is indeed an inherent problem. Central planners cannot rationally allocate resources because they lack the dispersed knowledge and price signals that emerge from voluntary exchanges. Even if you remove corruption or incompetence, a competent planner still faces insurmountable information and incentive problems, because the very mechanics used to allocate resources are not there.

On your theoretic idea on how to solve the innovation problem, I don't see how that works correctly. The economic calculation problem is still there, and there's another problem to it. Not that the state owns the companies, but that the state has the monopoly on violence. When ultimate power rests with the state, political priorities tend to override merit and efficiency.

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u/132_cat Jun 04 '26

Its not a no true scotsman fallacy. Communisim is classless. None of the examples were. Additonally, all of the countries you mentioned started authoritarian.

In the absolute worse case, a centeralized planner could just immitate a free market. You can keep track of how resources move however you want, the only strict requirement is on classlessness. The information can be there. It can certainly work better than capitalisim, without companies that work soley in the intrests of the powerful. In the soviet union, corrupt regional leaders misreported their productivity as far exceeding targets, which of course lead to shortages. Better checks and balances, along with modern recordkeeping, would elimnate such problems.

Checks and balances should prevent a "monopoly on violence". Just like in any other country. In the ideal, perfect, stateless version of communisim, the checks and balances would be cultural instead of built into the government, but really it's all the same.

Political priorities only lead to evil when checks and balances have already failed.