487
There recently was an article in The Street about multinationals complaining about people not having enough money to spend on their products.
So basically, Capitalism is running out of peoples money right now.
This less famously led to the saying 'The problem with conservatism is you eventually run out of other peoples stuff to sell'
You eventually run out of people. People to work in your factories and to consume the products those factories make. If you don't pay a wage people can live on and the people who are working can't consume things then you don't really have an economy except for the military/security apparatus that's required to keep people from revolting. The end result of unchecked wealth and power is an autocracy and those end up failing economically in comparison to democracies. I like the analogy of a black hole. At a certain point too much power is concentrated in the middle and the whole system collapses in on itself instead of shining brightly as a star.
AI will solve all of that for a fraction of the cost!
/S
No. With socialism, you’re spending other people’s money until you eventually run out and can’t achieve your goals. With capitalism you’re extracting other people’s money and if they’ve run out you arguably achieved your goal
Only one of those has the money recirculating.
late stage capitalism
Uggg... I hate this nostradamus ass term. It's condescending and idiotic at the same time.
a thatcher thread? obligatory only queen i recognise video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUlj48Rvp1c
it's a symptom of consolidation of power.
Which just shows that we can't really design a good system that'll actually work
We can certainly design one that works better, but yes, every system will have contradictions that need to be overcome.
I'm not talking so much about contradictions, as i'm talking about the fact that capitalism in all its morbid glory is somehow still the best we got in practice. I'm not talking anarcho-capitalism of course, and not even whatever tf US got.
When spiced-up with regulations and lefty benefits, it suddenly stops being so bad without the need for revolutions, planned economics and other unnecessary control-freaky fluff stemmed from misunderstanding the core concepts of economics.
If you "can certainly design one that works better", i urge you to do so right now.
Socialism obviously works better than capitalism, and the fact that you're arguing for capitalism in the Late Stage Capitalism comm tells me that you aren't here in good faith.
i'm here because i don't like to sit in an echo-chamber, preferring to trial my views in a dialectic process of discussion:)
Also, this comm kinda mainly relates to US when it needs to dunk on capitalism, which kinda tells more about US and its inbred political system, than it is telling about capitalism itself.
Now, how about you elaborate, telling exactly how socialism would work better than a capitalistic system with all the regulations and welfare would, rather than giving me a non-answer?
I can’t give you an entire education on political economy and socialist history in one comment. At the very least, socialism works towards solving the conflict that arises when one class of people do all the labour while another class reaps the profits, as occurs in the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production. This conflict is the main source of misery in the world today- war, starvation, deaths from preventable disease, climate change/ecological collapse etc. are all inevitable under capitalism because of the profit motive. Those things can all happen under socialism, but the system itself doesn’t incentivize them.
I can’t give you an entire education on political economy and socialist history in one comment.
well, good thing you can't, because that would be graphomania, not a concrete answer to my question.
At the very least, socialism works towards solving the conflict that arises when one class of people do all the labour while another class reaps the profits [...]
Still nothing a good ol' law regulation or two can't fix... Without the need for a regime change.
Hell, let's imagine we live in the dreamland, where your average worker earns more-less same as their manager, or, better yet, ceo or even the business founder. Now riddle me this: who'd found the business in the first place? Who'd take the risks if reward is practically nonexistent?
I already hear you saying "we don't need no private enterprise!". I won't even talk about how the product diversity is a very good thing to have, because even if we don't account for that, there's still a new problem, two even. Namely, corruption and enshittification. When everything is centralized, and every enterprise is basically a government-mandated monopoly, those two become very prominent. So prominent, in fact, that by the sheer force of inheritance the post-USSR countries are still more corrupt than their western neighbours. Decentralization is the single most effective method to fight it.
Enshittification? We live in the world where we live, i bet you know how monopolies tied to that word. Thanks to the previous "power word", present in any highly-centralized government, no regulation would prevent it, only make it more creative in some cases.
This conflict is the main source of misery in the world today- war, starvation, deaths from preventable disease, climate change/ecological collapse etc. are all inevitable under capitalism [...]
You count starvation as one of the sources of misery of a modern human? You're either mindlessly quoting a 200yo book, or you live in one of not so many countries that still have problems with food. Newsflash, but starvation is not an issue for the majority of people in the 21st century, and, dare i say, there's no correlation between starvation and capitalism, considering that the entirety of US, EU and pleades of other capitalistic countris haven't known the taste of starvation for a very long time. According to the world resource institute 30-40% of the food produced in the world goes to waste. Any modern convenience store has a wider assortment of food than our ancestors have ever dreamed of. It's almost as if since Carl Marx wrote Das Kapital, the food production had been solved by automatization and advancements in chemistry and biology.
Preventable diseases? Well, technically all diseases can be called preventable, at least medical studies try their best for this statement to be as close to reality as possible, so i'd like you to give me examples of what you consider a "preventable disease", specifically, a preventable disease people systematically die of in all, or at least the majority of capitalist countries specifically due to capitalism-related issues. Because, as i said, if there's one outlier like US, it doesn't paint capitalism as a bad paradigm, it paints US as a deeply problematic country with fucked-up laws.
Next, the ecological issues. It sure is a challenge for humanity to solve, but i won't say it makes us miserable right now. What kind of problems capitalism has with ecology that socialism is guaranteed to solve, or at least "doesn't incentivize"? You think once socialism is established there'd be no schizo-politicians and climate change deniers? Or that a highly-centralized system isn't a fertile soil for lobbying and greenwashing?
And finally, war. There's an old saying. Something about wars ceasing only when there'd be a single person left alive or something. Do i really have to elaborate?
[...] because of the profit motive.
Except socialism doesn't get rid of the profit motive. It just moves it from per-enterprise to global economy scale, i.e. it practically turns whole country into a single gargantuan enterprise working for its profit.
Those things can all happen under socialism, but the system itself doesn’t incentivize them.
I tend to disagree. Check my previous paragraph to get the reason.
To summarize what i'm saying, everything is a poison if the dose is wrong. I think the path to the least shitty system lies through gradual changes of the existing system in response to the immediate concerns
Thatcher was being disingenuous because socialism involves "our money," in which everyone works together for mutual benefit. Capitalism can't function without other people's labor being exploited and under-compensated. I want my taxes to help pay for a portion of things I couldn't afford by myself and for it to benefit others because then I'm not being price gouged by others who are only demanding more because more is being demanded of them by the greediest among us.
Well, we can just print more money! That's the solution for both capitalism and socialism, works every time.
Don't worry, the predatory bankers that are appointed to the Fed are surely looking out for our best interests, they would never, ever abuse their positions for the benefit of JP Morgan or anything like that, don't be silly
That's how America is now currently $40 trillion in debt! Just shut up and keep printing!
If they just printed it they wouldn't be in debt. The capitalists have successfully introduced a system in which the government has to borrow money from private banks who borrow it from the central bank that prints it. Instead of just printing money, we now print money and pay interest on it to private banks.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Isn't Capitalism just Socialism for billionaires?
why do you need money?
if money disappeared, the workers would still be there, the factories would still be there, there'd still be trucks and ships and oil and houses and crops and whatever else sustains our existence.
you'd think if humans were as smart as they claim they are they'd come up with a solution that doesn't involve paper and credit and oppression.
i think your average person would be totally willing to put in 20 hours a week pumping shit out of septic tanks if they spent the other hours chilling and just doing whatever.
As someone who puts in 40 hours a week in an office job that barely pays enough for me to get by... as long as that septic job pays well enough, sure I'd give it the old college try
The number of things I can tolerate and even enjoy at 20 hours a week is a gigantic, frankly kinda boundless list, while that same question at 40, let alone 60+ hours...that list is tiny.
Really feels like a huge tragedy, to add to all the more direct kinds, the way we destroy our ability to enjoy our time.
Neoliberalism has destroyed demand. At long last it's finally done. Now they are complaining about China's overcapacity.
China is bringing the developing countries into the 21st Century with it, something that the West refused to do while they had the chance. So it's not overcapacity, it's just that the West isn't the exclusive consumer.
Thatcher said that with 0 irony as she defunded public hospitals to get replaced by charity from rich child rapist Jimmy Sevile
Don't worry, Jim will fix it.
Thatcher, like any capitalist dickhead, is a liar and malignant.
Was. Thankfully.
If you're English you can literaly go piss on her grave.
Sadly it's guarded and cameras
People tried, they got arrested
I vote that we create the Thatcher Urinary Fund to pay for the defense of people who go urinate on her grave.
Yes! We should!
If a bunch of teens can speed run through Scientology buildings and Naruto run through area 51...
What I'm trying to say is I think it's a lack of motivation
Like, actual human guards? Wow, right down there on the worst job ever list. As far as crimes go, tried to piss on Thatchers grave is something to frame for posterity. Gonna guess someone got away with it, hence the guards (maybe bribeable?) but thanks for the reality check.
Specifically it's cause she's buried in a convent graveyard
Hmmfh, in what way was she a nun? But thanks for the info.
You don't have to be a nun to get buried in one, it turns out, just have to know people in power.
But also turns out that I was misremembering, she got buried in the grounds of a WAR VETERAN Hospital - Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Go back into the history of capitalism, and every "scare" that capitalists use to maintain the system as is, happens under capitalism. The irony being that most capitalists see the end results of their greed and project it onto other systems.
Every accusation is an admission.
It's so funny, because only one of those two systems is designed to invest back into itself. The other is a zero sum siphon that perfectly embodies what she described.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Yes, its about time the billionaires money was spent on socialism until it runs out.
A K shaped economy is a broken economy.
The top of that K is all the money that should have been spent in the middle and the bottom, but was hoarded instead.
Yes, and that has already happened. That is why the richest have switched to the source of all money: The government.
Spiderman pointing at spiderman dot jpeg
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
487 points (100.0% liked)
Late Stage Capitalism
3665 readers
459 users here now
A place for 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.
A zero-tolerance policy for bigotry of any kind. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
RULES:
1 Understand the left starts at anti-capitalism.
2 No Trolling
3 No capitalist apologia, anti-socialism, anti-communism, or liberalism, liberalism is in direct conflict with the left. Support for capitalism or for the parties or ideologies that uphold it are not welcome or tolerated.
4 No imperialism, conservatism, reactionism or Zionism, lessor evil rhetoric. Dismissing 3rd party votes or 'wasted votes on 3rd party' is lessor evil rhetoric.
5 No bigotry, no racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or any type of prejudice.
6 Be civil in comments and no accusations of being a bot, 'paid by Putin,' Tankie, etc. This includes instance shaming.
Introduction to Socialism (external links)
Marxism-Leninism Study Guide: Basic Course
Marxism-Leninism Study Guide: Advanced Course
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS