this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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What happens if capitalism works perfectly? A few people have great lives (the capitalists) and everyone else is screwed (the workers). That's the entire point of capitalism.
What happens if socialism works perfectly? Everyone has decent lives.
(What you wrote about corruption is true, of course, but your first claim was simply false.)
I don't believe "fairness" is a defining characteristic of Capitalism. Can you please provide a definition of Captialism so that I can be sure we are talking about the same thing?
I think you are confused. I don't believe I've tried to make a comparison between socialism and capitalism in this thread. Perhaps that was someone else?
Actually you seem to agree with me. Capitalism gives people a chance to become the capitalists, I agree ... and that screws over everyone else. That's your view of perfection.
I think that's a shitty world to try to build. I think it's selfish and destructive. But you seem to like it... How sad.
Try talking to a person who grew up in a primarily black neighbourhood in America. Or a poor person who had to skip school so they could work to afford food.
Almost every rich person now had rich parents and rich grandparents. Even the "self-made" rich people had access to opportunities not available to poor people.
It's easy to risk everything to try starting your own business when failure means going back to your parents for food and housing. It's so much harder to justify trying when failure means starving on the street, and not trying means continuing to live in a house.
Capitalism does not give people a fair shot. It takes wealth from people with capital to give to people with capital, and by necessity, oppresses people to stop them from gaining capital.
The vast majority of people simply do not have a fair shot.
Anyone has a fair shot at being a wage slave
People who defended capitalism at this point in time are in constant denial. Capitalism only works well for everyone in highly competitive new fields/markets.
Once the monopoly sets in it no longer serves a useful function to the rest of society but does enrich a minority.
An awful lot of capitalistic practice is rent seeking nowadays. It doesn't add any value and instead creates it out of thin air.
There has never been an effective small businesses capitalism economy that every capitalists uses to justify capitalism. It always ends up as game of monopoly.
That is a strawman argument. I did not say that, and it is not relevant to what I did say.
Yeah I agree, that was a ridiculous thing to say.