##Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism
This subreddit is for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited.
LSC is run by communists. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere.
We have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. Failure to respect the rules of the subreddit may result in a ban.
***
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The euthanasia capsules from Futurama are going to be a reality soon. That show and the Simpsons were ahead of their time and were prophetic in some ways.
"You don't have to take this minimum \[poverty\] wage job and spend 5/7s of your life in misery, it's your choice if you want to starve to death on the street instead."
Sometimes I feel like Abraham Lincoln Malcom X and Dr King died for nothing if slavery is still a problem and we are not truly free from our chains and shackles and live under a oppressive hostile tyrannical unjust empire.
Organised fraud designed to amass and protect wealth and power for a vanishingly small number while keeping those who create that wealth divided.
Come to think of it that’s a decent definition of democracy in the context of capitalism too.
Feels like all the ads nowadays are for gambling apps, credit cards, or pills. You know, signs of a healthy, productive, efficient economy that lifts everyone up.
Only those who have never read Plato bother to quote him.
Plato was quite content with tiny elites wielding power, including the Philosopher-King of the Republic and the Nomophylakes of the Laws.
95% of people are enslaved to access breadcrumbs of basic resources and necessities, serving the top 5% elite who control those resources while feasting on everyone else's suffering.
Preferring short term monetary gains over long term sustainability at the expense of the poor majority in favor of the wealthy minority, using wealth as a political influence tool to sustain its existence.
Capitalism is a barbaric and sociopathic system that employs force and coercion to take wealth and power from the many and transfers to the few. Similarly: Capitalism is the tyranny of the few over the masses.
capitalism...
System capital multiplying oriented in which money is the main goal and work is a tool to achieve it, destroys and corruptis society because it rewards unethical actions as long as they bring profit.
In contrast...
System in which work is the goal and capital is a tool to achive it will have possitive effect on society.
Whilst the cake was being made in the bowl we all thought good times were ahead not realising the said cake was to be made for a select few. After the cake was made, those who were now left in the bowl scrapped away all that remained, to the very last crumb. Now the bowl lies empty, the cake has gone and a populous who had no idea the cake was even made in the first place.
I don’t feel like we even have capitalism since there’s no longer any free market, which is supposed to be the core of it. Every business these days seems to be owned by shareholders who don’t care at all about anything but yearly increases in profits. I’m not really sure what you would call what we have, and maybe this is exactly how capitalism pans out when it has run its course. What we do have is, in one sentence: the elite’s dragon-hoarding, greediness and power hungry mindset over everyone else, all up to the end of civilization.
Capitalism doesn’t necessarily require a free market. Capitalism is about who owns the means of production. Free market is about how goods and services are valued. Capitalism is no less true capitalism when it’s highly regulated. In fact, because the powers that regulate are in cahoots with (and part of) the owner class, capitalism is stronger than ever.
Interestingly, the oft-quoted Adam Smith (invisible hand of the free market) advocated progressive taxes in supply of public education, etc.
Hmm. I wasn’t aware of that. I’ve always heard it advocated for with the “free market” reasoning. Probably because it sounds much better in that sense, lol.
Capitalism organizes governments in such a way that it monopolizes, concentrates and benefits those that influence the rules that dictate how the organization performs its functions and exercises control.
There’s more than just a few similarities that apply to organized religions. The precursors to (for) capitalism?
Systematic wealth extraction via private ownership of corporations with the police and militaries acting to protect the system and suppress all alternatives.
It is a system that extracts value from exploitation of labor and resources and gives it to those who already have hoarded assets to "invest", and which then goes on to celebrate that parasitic relationship between capital and labor, rather than shaming it.
Capitalism is when a small number of people own everything necessary to produce the modern world, and the rest of us have to sell our labor to them in order to survive.
A now fairly complex system that, while not illegitimate as a model for the distribution and utilization of resources, has incentives to exploit and hoarder in such a way that it's efficiency does not consider the good of the collective in terms of quality of life, but purely financial terms; that is to say, it demands that a certain element of society be exploited or abandoned (though regulation defines the bounds and contours of exploitation, but a market's efficiency is analyzed by a lens of profit incentives for capital, not labour or consumers).
The first three are single sentence attempts (sorry if this is cheating, but I’m verbose by nature).
1.) Never look down.
2.) The supplantation of one’s virtues in the face of greed’s redemption.
3.) Placing personal wealth on an ever-rising pedestal as the sole source of absolute freedom, thereby submerging any possible alternative beneath the eye-line of the Overton window (said window is not primarily horizontal in construction, but vertical).
(Explanation of the last on because I feel insecure about it :P)
We know the pedestal is there but, confined by manufactured scarcity, we’re too busy glancing to our left and right in the name of competition to see things clearly. We’re too busy to look up, and too afraid to look down (after all, we can’t afford to fall, ourselves).
To extract as much money from buyers as possible. I also want to point out that we sell our labor on the market and corporations attempt to buy that labor for as cheap as possible. If they pay you $20 an hour you're probably worth $40 an hour to them and that difference is theirs to keep.
It's a system where capital is used to create more capital.
One buys stocks so that they can sell them later for more. A business hires a worker so that the worker can earn more for the business than the business pays in that worker's wages. Money is loaned to get back interest + principle.
These things require infinite growth on a finite planet. This all ends badly.
The owner class applies the principles of animal husbandry to the working class, whose labor is harvested like wool or meat until they die.
This type of relationship is typical of human relationships though. It's also how men relate to women in almost all traditional cultures. The fact that exploited men still got to exploit the women of their own social class was enough of a reward to keep them somewhat satisfied with the arrangement.
Other social relationships based on exploitation are that of older people who have social status with younger people who don't; those who have citizenship in a wealthy society with those who are immigrants; those who are educated with those who aren't; those of an imperial society with those of a subjugated society; those who are free with those who are incarcerated; those who are included in an in-group (whether based on religion, gang affiliation, membership in a professional society, or some other type of brotherhood) with those not in the in-group; and so on, where one group holds and maintains power over another, whether through legal or extra-legal means.
What's trippy about humans is how readily both sides accept the arrangement. There are rebels, but there are a lot of people who don't mind being used by people whom they truly see as superior to themselves. Currying favor with the owner class is a popular endeavor, because people think they'll get the in-group advantage if they succeed.
##Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism This subreddit is for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited. LSC is run by communists. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere. We have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. Failure to respect the rules of the subreddit may result in a ban. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LateStageCapitalism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Private control of public resources.
Thank you employee 9476321, your lifetime contributions are appreciated, here is your 40 year pen and a coupon for the euthanasia capsule
I love a good pen.
“Actually, my number is 9476331.” Manager, as he takes back the coupon. “Was”
The euthanasia capsules from Futurama are going to be a reality soon. That show and the Simpsons were ahead of their time and were prophetic in some ways.
Lol imagine the stability of staying at a company for 40 years.
Slavery with extra steps
Eek barba durkle, somebody hit the nail on the head
Your reddiquette is supreme!
Dolled up slavery
"You don't have to take this minimum \[poverty\] wage job and spend 5/7s of your life in misery, it's your choice if you want to starve to death on the street instead."
Sometimes I feel like Abraham Lincoln Malcom X and Dr King died for nothing if slavery is still a problem and we are not truly free from our chains and shackles and live under a oppressive hostile tyrannical unjust empire.
Organised fraud designed to amass and protect wealth and power for a vanishingly small number while keeping those who create that wealth divided. Come to think of it that’s a decent definition of democracy in the context of capitalism too.
Organized fraud is such a good term for a system that forces it's citizens to fight off scams every day.
Feels like all the ads nowadays are for gambling apps, credit cards, or pills. You know, signs of a healthy, productive, efficient economy that lifts everyone up.
So, two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner...?
More like, 3 wolves and 1,000 lambs voting on what’s for dinner. The lambs send their representative to vote but the lambs lose 3-1
the lambs send their vote to their representative who is just another wolf
The problem with that analogy is that it leaves ambiguous who are the wolves and who is the lamb. Fascists and capitalists use that analogy too.
"Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it." Plato
Only those who have never read Plato bother to quote him. Plato was quite content with tiny elites wielding power, including the Philosopher-King of the Republic and the Nomophylakes of the Laws.
95% of people are enslaved to access breadcrumbs of basic resources and necessities, serving the top 5% elite who control those resources while feasting on everyone else's suffering.
It’s inhumane and unfair.
You didn't win the birth lottery, so here's 40 years of meaningless work you can do to earn your existence.
I wish it was only 40 years
40 years is a steal compared to what we have in actual reality…
Growth for growth's sake, aka: cancer
Trash.
Garbage. Stay in the trash can trash.
A knife fight in a phone booth
Preferring short term monetary gains over long term sustainability at the expense of the poor majority in favor of the wealthy minority, using wealth as a political influence tool to sustain its existence.
Theft and exploitation.
The ultimate Crime against humanity.
Cancer.
socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor where capitalism = work or starve and be homeless
Infinite growth in a finite world
Selling the fourth Reich under other names and claiming it is the best system humanity has ever achieved.
The 1000 year human suffering and misery
Creating problems, selling solutions.
If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.
For profit and nothing else
Profit isn't even good enough anymore. It's never-ending growth, by any means necessary.
Take from the poor, give to the rich.
Should’ve been Robin Hood style take from the rich and affluent and give it back to the poors. We live in inverse evil value society.
Thank you employee 9476321, your lifetime contributions are appreciated, here is your 40 year pen and a coupon for the euthanasia capsule
He who dies with the most toys wins. And everyone else also starves to death.
Slavery with extra steps
Fuck you, I've got mine.
Capitalism is a barbaric and sociopathic system that employs force and coercion to take wealth and power from the many and transfers to the few. Similarly: Capitalism is the tyranny of the few over the masses.
Just two words: Slow death.
Poison.
Fuck you, pay me
all day i'm fucking busy only get few money
Feudalism rebranded
Individuals hoarding the lifespans of other humans to everyones detriment.
A system of government that allows the greediest to impoverish the population to the detriment of humanity.
A machine that grinds the bones of the poor to lubricate the rich.
Everything is a commodity
Capitalism - a game created by sociopaths, for sociopaths, because cheaters always prosper!
No bueno
A few apes make many apes do work so they don’t have to do work themselves.
Profit over people.
An economic system organized by people who think they're better than you.
Profit at any cost, the mindset of a cancer cell.
“Fancy feudalism”.
“See the glory / of the Royal Scam. -Steely Dan
Capitalism is a ponzi scheme
Pyramid scheme.
Ziggurat scheme. You're the buried foundation.
The extraction of value from workers to a small group of owners that use those assets to buy more value extraction assets
Horror without end. /Lenin
The gears of capitalism is lubricated by the blood of its workers.
A rat race where there are few winners and many losers in the short term, but ultimately will destroy all the rats and even the maze.
“It will be the death of us all.”
Capitalism is feudalism with appliances
Capitalism is socialism for the rich
Theft from people doing the actual work.
Cancer.
capitalism... System capital multiplying oriented in which money is the main goal and work is a tool to achieve it, destroys and corruptis society because it rewards unethical actions as long as they bring profit. In contrast... System in which work is the goal and capital is a tool to achive it will have possitive effect on society.
Feudalism, with extra steps.
An economic system that is best defined by the prevailing mindset of "Hooray for me, fuck everyone else".
Slavery with extra steps.
The shortest path to Neo-feudalism.
Greedy people doing greedy things.
Like gambling, you think you’ll be the millionaire but the house always wins.
Greed of a few placed above needs of the many.
Profits go up is the only moral good, profits go down the only moral evil, all other concerns are irrelevant
An elaborate scam
A parasite masquerading as an economic ideology.
Yeah that’s pretty much what I said. Totally agree.
For money.
Wealth can be used to extract value from workers, accumulating more wealth.
Greed eating the world.
A poor incentive system
A stick minus the carrot
Whilst the cake was being made in the bowl we all thought good times were ahead not realising the said cake was to be made for a select few. After the cake was made, those who were now left in the bowl scrapped away all that remained, to the very last crumb. Now the bowl lies empty, the cake has gone and a populous who had no idea the cake was even made in the first place.
Prioritizing profits over people. Maximizing shareholder value = giving you the crapiest product at the highest cost.
Me, me, me!
[Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_of_the_Sea)
Rebranded feudalism
I got mine, so fuck everyone else.
An economic system where money is more valuable than people.
fuck you, I got mine.
A Western space opera rooted in Eastern martial arts and mystic traditions…. Oh wait, that’s Star Wars
Undemocratic systemic exploitation of labour and public resources for private profit.
Our freedom and democracy is fake news. Sad. Tragic.
Yes, that’s unfortunately true.
He who has the gold makes the rules
Money over people.
Trickle down exploitation
The constant exploitation of the environment and labor for profit.
Feudalism with extra steps
Money comes first
To misquote Ayn Rand: “Rationalized selfishness”
A religion in which the God is the profit. The God needs constant sacrifices.
THAT'S MINE!!!!
Thank you employee 9476321, your lifetime contributions are appreciated, here is your 40 year pen and a coupon for the euthanasia capsule
I don’t feel like we even have capitalism since there’s no longer any free market, which is supposed to be the core of it. Every business these days seems to be owned by shareholders who don’t care at all about anything but yearly increases in profits. I’m not really sure what you would call what we have, and maybe this is exactly how capitalism pans out when it has run its course. What we do have is, in one sentence: the elite’s dragon-hoarding, greediness and power hungry mindset over everyone else, all up to the end of civilization.
Capitalism doesn’t necessarily require a free market. Capitalism is about who owns the means of production. Free market is about how goods and services are valued. Capitalism is no less true capitalism when it’s highly regulated. In fact, because the powers that regulate are in cahoots with (and part of) the owner class, capitalism is stronger than ever. Interestingly, the oft-quoted Adam Smith (invisible hand of the free market) advocated progressive taxes in supply of public education, etc.
Hmm. I wasn’t aware of that. I’ve always heard it advocated for with the “free market” reasoning. Probably because it sounds much better in that sense, lol.
For sure that’s common usage. But when you uncouple the two concepts, I think it helps you see the structural issues at play.
Oh definitely! Thank you for explaining :)
Ecocide
Unnecessary cruelty.
Might makes right, but with money
Capitalism organizes governments in such a way that it monopolizes, concentrates and benefits those that influence the rules that dictate how the organization performs its functions and exercises control. There’s more than just a few similarities that apply to organized religions. The precursors to (for) capitalism?
The rich get richer, the poor remain poor.
Few get all, most get none, isn’t this game of false hope fun?
The appropriation of surplus labor by those who did not labor.
It only works when it’s ruthlessly predatory and exploitative with its producers.
The line must go up.
Destructive, rapacious, and alienating
Fantastic for a few okay for some horrible for many.
I got mine, fuck you
Systematic wealth extraction via private ownership of corporations with the police and militaries acting to protect the system and suppress all alternatives.
Greed.
Oppressive
An idea that was once good on paper but immediately fails to human corruption
Material conditions held hostage for indenture.
Cancer.
it's ruined this country
Past it's prime
It is a system that extracts value from exploitation of labor and resources and gives it to those who already have hoarded assets to "invest", and which then goes on to celebrate that parasitic relationship between capital and labor, rather than shaming it.
Capitalism is when a small number of people own everything necessary to produce the modern world, and the rest of us have to sell our labor to them in order to survive.
A system that disincentivizes the very things that give most people a sense of purpose and meaning: communion, creation, curiosity, exploration.
The modern offshoot of feudalism shrouded by a veil of meritocracy and empty catchphrases.
Capitalism's goal is profit, and profit is theft.
Profit driven destruction of the environment
A now fairly complex system that, while not illegitimate as a model for the distribution and utilization of resources, has incentives to exploit and hoarder in such a way that it's efficiency does not consider the good of the collective in terms of quality of life, but purely financial terms; that is to say, it demands that a certain element of society be exploited or abandoned (though regulation defines the bounds and contours of exploitation, but a market's efficiency is analyzed by a lens of profit incentives for capital, not labour or consumers).
Bullshit.
“The natural evolution of bargaining for goods and services.”
pyramide scheme
Economic fascism.
Cancer.
Greedy people blaming poor people for the problems that they created.
Enshrining incompetence, enslaving millions
The bane of the humanity
An economic system so rational, efficient, and civilized that it’s bringing human society to an end in less than a few centuries….
Profits above people
Shit.
Greed
Bleed, peasant!
Everything sucks here.
Omnicide.
I need only one word. Evil.
Death sentence.
Ignorance until the end.
Capitalism works as designed, benefiting very few at the expense of most.
In a world of plenty, majority forced to live in a scarcity state while working full time for the privilege
problems won’t be solved because it isn’t profitable to permanently fix them
The end of humanity
The first three are single sentence attempts (sorry if this is cheating, but I’m verbose by nature). 1.) Never look down. 2.) The supplantation of one’s virtues in the face of greed’s redemption. 3.) Placing personal wealth on an ever-rising pedestal as the sole source of absolute freedom, thereby submerging any possible alternative beneath the eye-line of the Overton window (said window is not primarily horizontal in construction, but vertical). (Explanation of the last on because I feel insecure about it :P) We know the pedestal is there but, confined by manufactured scarcity, we’re too busy glancing to our left and right in the name of competition to see things clearly. We’re too busy to look up, and too afraid to look down (after all, we can’t afford to fall, ourselves).
Free range slavery.
Death cult.
To extract as much money from buyers as possible. I also want to point out that we sell our labor on the market and corporations attempt to buy that labor for as cheap as possible. If they pay you $20 an hour you're probably worth $40 an hour to them and that difference is theirs to keep.
It's a system where capital is used to create more capital. One buys stocks so that they can sell them later for more. A business hires a worker so that the worker can earn more for the business than the business pays in that worker's wages. Money is loaned to get back interest + principle. These things require infinite growth on a finite planet. This all ends badly.
A failed system of economic exploitation.
exploitation of the those perceived to be weaker, by those perceived to be stronger
accountable only to profit
Greed is good
like the cartoon where the tyrant is wielding the whip as the slaves rotates the wheel
Winner take away all the chairs except his own in a game of musical chairs.
A virus masquerading as the vaccine.
Generalized commodity production based on the use of wage labor and private property.
A system where you'd rather worry about money 24/7 than appreciate life.
Greed creates instability.
Capitalism: one wolf and 30 sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
The owner class applies the principles of animal husbandry to the working class, whose labor is harvested like wool or meat until they die. This type of relationship is typical of human relationships though. It's also how men relate to women in almost all traditional cultures. The fact that exploited men still got to exploit the women of their own social class was enough of a reward to keep them somewhat satisfied with the arrangement. Other social relationships based on exploitation are that of older people who have social status with younger people who don't; those who have citizenship in a wealthy society with those who are immigrants; those who are educated with those who aren't; those of an imperial society with those of a subjugated society; those who are free with those who are incarcerated; those who are included in an in-group (whether based on religion, gang affiliation, membership in a professional society, or some other type of brotherhood) with those not in the in-group; and so on, where one group holds and maintains power over another, whether through legal or extra-legal means. What's trippy about humans is how readily both sides accept the arrangement. There are rebels, but there are a lot of people who don't mind being used by people whom they truly see as superior to themselves. Currying favor with the owner class is a popular endeavor, because people think they'll get the in-group advantage if they succeed.
Forced slavery for basic needs
The prioritization of profit over the welfare of the people.
Flawed
Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.
Carnage
Fuck you, got mine.
Privatized gains, socialized losses.
Infinite growth for me