Capatilism is Objectively Superior to any other form of Governace.

[Daniel Balan]

1 minute ago, AerisVahnEphelia said:

the more liberal china become the more "liberal" they are turning.
it's already happening, you under estimate framing like spiral dynamic.
 

China is blue. They have healthy parts of Blue and totally unhealthy parts of it. China is definitely a bit more evoled than Russia also Chinese culture is 100% more better than Russian one. Russia is at stage red, China solid blue

 

[Ellonek]

Nothing rides humanity like capitalism does. I am not into it but that is what works for the general populace.

[zazen]

1 hour ago, Elliott said:

Now Google "JP Morgan bailing out the united states of America". For your historical amnesia.

Elaborate on the point your trying to make - is it that an oligarch richer than God had so much concentrated wealth and power that he could single handedly decide whether the US economy survived? Is that free market capitalism?

The problem isn’t that JP Morgan once bailed out the state - its a problem if the state’s stability depends on JP Morgan type actors existing. That’s why the Federal Reserve was created after that crisis.

From Wiki:

“The panic was triggered by the failed attempt in October 1907 to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company.” Ie Capital being naughty.

”Collapse of TC&I's stock price was averted by an emergency takeover by Morgan's U.S. Steel Corporation, a move approved by the trust-busting President Theodore Roosevelt. The following year, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, a leading Republican, established and chaired a commission to investigate the crisis and propose future solutions, which led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.”

So the excesses of capital accumulation created such instability, and then a God tier capitalist consolidates during that crisis and can then make certain demands for the price of rescue.

And Roosevelt just said “fuck it, exempt JP from anti-trust laws cos we need him more than our laws” and let him gobble up competitors in a consolidation play.

For your historical amnesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907

Edited Friday at 10:50 PM by zazen

[Basman]

22 hours ago, Lyubov said:

You oversimplify and distort a lot of nuance to argue in favor of whatever we have now. Capitalist manifest destiny. I do not agree with your analysis of capitalism and what we have now is not naturally how people have always done business since the caveman era. 

There has been found remains of old cro magnon settlements in areas which couldn't naturally support human life. They surmize that the people in this settlements survived off trading sea shells. 

The first written languages where partial languages who's purpose was first and foremost to record ledgers. The oldest human texts are ledgers, bill of ownership, reciets, etc. IE. Business.

The concept of money is just a refinement of less universal currencies that have been used in the past, like grain or shells, which are itself a refinement of bartering goods directly with items, which has the issue of being a temperamental affair as both parties need to have something the other wants, whuch isn't always the case. Business is something we've been developing and refining since pre-history. 

Capitalism is just a highly refined form of trade, which comes natural to us as we are a cooperative species with the ability to provide different kinds of value to each other that allow us to more effectively survive. By trading value, strangers can cooperate bit like a family unit. It allows us to specialize. What is unique to capitalism is the degree to which you have to specialize in order to provide value. In the past, you had do more of everything in order to survive, like growing your own food and making your own entertainment. 

[Leo Gura]

34 minutes ago, Kid A said:

Everything that ceases to exist is a failure?

In the context of government systems, yes.

[Daniel Balan]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

I am talking about their economic system.

It's called nuance.

I still don't understand you. China's economic model is impossible without dictatorship. Without massive propaganda and brainwashing its citizens until they become literal machines that want on their own volition to work non stop for their economy and collective.

You said multiple times that you would kill yourself that if you were to live your life as a wage slave, so I still can't connect the dots in your reasoning. 

[Elliott]

49 minutes ago, zazen said:

Elaborate on the point your trying to make - is it that an oligarch richer than God had so much concentrated wealth and power that he could single handedly decide whether the US economy survived? Is that free market capitalism?

The problem isn’t that JP Morgan once bailed out the state - its a problem if the state’s stability depends on JP Morgan type actors existing. That’s why the Federal Reserve was created after that crisis.

From Wiki:

“The panic was triggered by the failed attempt in October 1907 to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company.” Ie Capital being naughty.

”Collapse of TC&I's stock price was averted by an emergency takeover by Morgan's U.S. Steel Corporation, a move approved by the trust-busting President Theodore Roosevelt. The following year, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, a leading Republican, established and chaired a commission to investigate the crisis and propose future solutions, which led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.”

So the excesses of capital accumulation created such instability, and then a God tier capitalist consolidates during that crisis and can then make certain demands for the price of rescue.

And Roosevelt just said “fuck it, exempt JP from anti-trust laws cos we need him more than our laws” and let him gobble up competitors in a consolidation play.

For your historical amnesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907

1895

 

Not bailing out a company, bailing out the united States of America

[AerisVahnEphelia]

39 minutes ago, Basman said:

There has been found remains of old cro magnon settlements in areas which couldn't naturally support human life. They surmize that the people in this settlements survived off trading sea shells. 

The first written languages where partial languages who's purpose was first and foremost to record ledgers. The oldest human texts are ledgers, bill of ownership, reciets, etc. IE. Business.

The concept of money is just a refinement of less universal currencies that have been used in the past, like grain or shells, which are itself a refinement of bartering goods directly with items, which has the issue of being a temperamental affair as both parties need to have something the other wants, whuch isn't always the case. Business is something we've been developing and refining since pre-history. 

Capitalism is just a highly refined form of trade, which comes natural to us as we are a cooperative species with the ability to provide different kinds of value to each other that allow us to more effectively survive. By trading value, strangers can cooperate bit like a family unit. It allows us to specialize. What is unique to capitalism is the degree to which you have to specialize in order to provide value. In the past, you had do more of everything in order to survive, like growing your own food and making your own entertainment. 

raping woman was too, it's even a better proof that we shall stop acting like fucking cro magnon if this is true.
 

[Ishanga]

Resource Based Economy is the best, but for this too work the majority of Humanity has to have a somewhat higher level of Consciousness that it is currently at... Right now nothing really works, Capitalism is just a hidden form of slavery, at least now it is, maybe 20 yrs ago and beyond it was working well, but not now, now we mostly are all slaves to the dollar, to the employer or consumer of your product to continue on with what You are doing, while the rich get richer and more powerful and the poor get poorer and less powerful and basic hidden from society where no one cares!

Edited yesterday at 12:08 AM by Ishanga

[Husseinisdoingfine]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

WTF are you talking about?

We are talking about a socialism success story and proof that it works.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 12:10 AM by Husseinisdoingfine

[zazen]

35 minutes ago, Elliott said:

1895

 

Not bailing out a company, bailing out the united States of America

What’s your point, elaborate?

[Elliott]

4 minutes ago, zazen said:

What’s your point, elaborate?

 

You said this

 

2 hours ago, zazen said:

.

“Capitalism” isn’t the least bad system - it was and is the least bad system for a specific civilization (Westwern) escaping a specific problem (Medieval fuedalism). It’s a mistake to assume this as universal and have a binary view of governing systems that is blind to history.

 

n 2008 capitalism privatized the gains and socialized the losses. When the system based upon the primacy of capital collpased it wasn’t the “free market” that saved the day but state power (banker bailouts) and ironically a so called communist state (China) that disciplines the excesses of capital instead of elevating it into God tier status - that stabilized the global financial system by buying US debt.

 

You were saying it's a parasitic relationship, one-way. It's symbiotic.

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

I still don't understand you. China's economic model is impossible without dictatorship. Without massive propaganda and brainwashing its citizens until they become literal machines that want on their own volition to work non stop for their economy and collective.

You said multiple times that you would kill yourself that if you were to live your life as a wage slave, so I still can't connect the dots in your reasoning. 

I've shared several videos about China on my blog. Life there is not as bad as you imagine. You'd need to watch those videos to understand what I'm pointing to.

https://www.actualized.org/insights/rethinking-china

Their system can liberalize as it grows more successful and meets everyone's material needs.

Edited 22 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Basman]

2 hours ago, AerisVahnEphelia said:

raping woman was too, it's even a better proof that we shall stop acting like fucking cro magnon if this is true.

There's nothing inherently immoral about trade. 

Nobody has an alternative to trade. Collectivism is just trade with differenent rules, which is exactly what I'm talking about.

Edited 22 hours ago by Basman

[Basman]

There has essentially been two kinds of value exchange throughout human history, trade and pillaging. The latter has largely completely fallen out in favor of trade due to its superior long-term value and being antithetical to one another (cooperative vs coercive).

Trade favors complex societies whereas pillaging undermines the trust and stability needed for expansive trade. 

Society flourished with modern capitalism in terms of living standards. We developed the complexity to support surplus trade coupled with technological advancements via science and an underlying belief in progress (which was a relatively recent development). Capitalism requires immense societal evolution to work and has enabled cooperation on a global scale. It's a huge reason for why we live in one of the most peaceful eras in human history.

Capitalism has its excesses which needs to be worked on in earnest, but people who see capitalism as a dirty word tend to be out of touch with survival and spoiled, ironically via capitalism. They can only see the bad and completely take for granted all its done for them.

The solution to the excesses of capitalism is to keep refining how we do trade, like we've already done for ages. Nobody really cares that there exist billionaires. They just get mad when there exist billionaires and they can't afford groceries. 

[Basman]

17 hours ago, Bjorn K Holmstrom said:

 We don't need to "smash capitalism." We need to patch the kernel so it optimizes for planetary stability instead of relative gain.

It's essentially true that the planet is finite, but with technological development we keep discovering new resources. The earth today has a lot more resources than the earth of the middle ages. 

Oil used to be worthless crude untill we discovered a use for it. Aluminium used to be more rare and valuable than gold. We figured out how to synthesize diamonds. If we figure out how to harvest meteorites from space then our resources become a hundredfold.

[Alex4]

5 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

I still don't understand you. China's economic model is impossible without dictatorship. Without massive propaganda and brainwashing its citizens until they become literal machines that want on their own volition to work non stop for their economy and collective.

You said multiple times that you would kill yourself that if you were to live your life as a wage slave, so I still can't connect the dots in your reasoning. 

Without a dictatorship and with a generally low intellectual level among the population, it’s very difficult to carry out solid long-term projects. I don’t know about your country, but in mine, a Western democracy, politicians only care about staying ahead in the polls, and it’s impossible to pass important laws because there’s no consensus. Despite all these problems, I still prefer our flawed democracy to the Chinese dictatorship, though I cant deny that systems like China’s do have quite a few advantages. In Europe, we need to start planing long term and acting as a unified bloc in certain aspects, and let go nationalistic crap. 

Edited 19 hours ago by Alex4

[zazen]

12 hours ago, Elliott said:

 

You said this

 

You were saying it's a parasitic relationship, one-way. It's symbiotic.

Symbiotic doesn’t mean equal - tapeworms are symbiotic yet parasitic. The main issue isn't that both can benefit but the asymetric gain and trajectory of private capital eroding the sovereignty of a state. You don't see issue with a state needing to depend on a oligarch who can exercise their private interest at the expense of the national interest?  If it was such a ''win-win'' why did anti-trust laws come about? Because of public backlash and the fact that a state recognizes the structural vulnerability and lack of sovereignty it has in needing to depend on a private individual. You just read a headline about a titan like JP bailing out the government and get a MAGA hard on. Analyse things structurally and not just on the surface.

The trajectory from 1895 to 2008 in fact shows a initial power imbalance that has since become institutionalized to the point it is too big to fail. Over time - has private capital become more powerful or less? Has the sovereignty of the state become sub-ordinate to capital or less? JP Morgan was in the same class of actors referred to as Robber Barons. 

Google Morganization: ''Morganization refers to the late 19th-century business strategy of J.P. Morgan, involving consolidating rival companies, forming powerful trusts/monopolies (like U.S. Steel, General Electric), stabilizing industries, and attracting European investment by creating massive, profitable entities, fundamentally shaping American finance and leading to modern antitrust laws and private equity. It was a period of intense industrial consolidation and monopolization, creating vast wealth but also public backlash against "robber barons". 

We've been over this in another thread where you couldn't see the harm bankers caused because of the 2008 crisis and instead blamed consumer choices lol.

You said: ''What you're pointing at has been getting minimized even, not growing. Look back to Carnegie and JP Morgan for heavens sake, look up JP Morgan's bailout of the United States, (the bank bailed the country out).''

On 14/11/2025 at 2:19 PM, zazen said:

Your looking at how they got rich (consumer spending) but ignoring what they do when rich (regulatory capture, monopoly consolidation, political influence). Corporations start out through consumers choosing, but then they become something different after accumulating wealth from those choices - to the point they can end up shaping consumer choices through advertising and eliminating alternative ''choices'' through monopolistic consolidation.

Decisions and desires are also engineered through advertising and algorithms. Even back in the Mad Men era - Edward Bernays influenced women to smoke by associating cigarettes with feminism (torches of freedom.) The advertising industry exists to create demand that doesn't exist - and modern day algorithms are that just ratcheted up. We are in cages influencing us at all times and ''inserting'' desires we didn't know we had.

That proves my point - private capital became too powerful and could no longer be ''disciplined'' by the market or individual consumer choices ''in the form of the most direct-democracy possible'' as you put it. If they democratically grew these companies via their choices why can't they democratically tackle them? It took state force to do so. That's where anti-trust laws came from (response to Rockerfeller). These same laws are no longer enforced to the degree they should be due to state capture by capital. Symbolic slap on the wrists for some firms occur - but the core organs aren't harmed ie the structural power dynamic.

Lina Khan was obstructed by the structure itself ie structural power.  https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/11/10/lina-khan-former-commissioner-of-ftc-speaks-on-panel-about-divide-in-digital-policy-between-united-states-and-europe/

''Khan said that Congress has been slow to check the power of tech companies while allowing them to hinder the lawmaking process by lobbying.

“Just the endless torrent of money, which has, candidly, influenced both parties, I think has kept things from getting over the finish line” 

Today’s power isn’t smaller but is more systemic and so is less visible - it's financialized into a financial empire which is why it goes unnoticed if we simply look at the surface. It's structural ie financial plumbing and architecture - not cosmetic ie the house which is visible to all of us in the form of store fronts and ''consumer choices''.  This is also why American's saying they have a better living standard than the rest of the world don't understand how - by a financial imperial arrangement maintaining the dollar as reserve currency which offers the US empire it's ''exorbitant privilege''.  It's not solely because of market genius and capitalism - dollar dominance subsidizes American affluence and consumption (customer choices).

JP Morgan became JP Morgan Chase the institution - Rockefeller became Exxon, BlackRock and a web of energy finance conglomerates. Private capital now upholds US hegemony in a symbiotic relationship - which is why they are treated as ''critical'' and beyond being challenged. State and private interest / capital has fused. If capital has global interests then they can subvert national interests.

Structural dependency - it's infrastructural and causes mutual capture or inter-dependency. Palantir doesn’t need to rule anything if it’s embedded in the defense, intelligence, and health data infrastructure the state relies on. Same with big tech and finance. So it's not about individual transactions - commerce, communication, and the state operate on privately owned platforms. It's hard to boycott our way out of monopolized infrastructure any more than we can boycott roads ie platforms.

 

 JP Morgan manages assets worth $4 trillion. That's equivalent to the GDP of the 4-5 biggest economies - Japan or India. It has more firepower than the UK. When your larger than the GDP of most countries you don't just manage assets in the market but can govern and dictate the nature of the market by your decisions - you dictate to ''sovereign states''.

You become indispensable because of your size. If a state must guarantee your survival for stability - it introduces perverse incentives - the more recklessly you grow, the more certain the governments backstop becomes. Gains get privatized, costs get externalized and socialized.

 

To understand better:

If excess of capital isn't checked you get gremlins like Soros:

See how he says he acts a-morally ie not immorally. The issue with perverse or misaligned incentives is that actors don't have to hate the world and act with ''intent to harm''. They simply act with indifference. That's the alignment issue with AI also - not that it could act with malice to harm humans but that its cold indifference to humans can cause harm because it simply seeks to achieve its objective regardless of the cost to humans. The same way corporations seek to achieve their objective - one of them being the legally mandated fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.

From our other conversation ''Corporations have a fiduciary duty to serve private shareholder value - not people. People are served as as secondary order effect, but not as a primary motive. If a corporation can cut costs, hike prices and lobby for regulations that favor it at the expense of the consumer - they will. This is legally mandated - this is what I mean by the system being structurally rigged in favor of capital.''

Even if your a enlightened lovey dovey bhudda with good intentions as a CEO - you will be replaced by someone who will execute on that legal mandate. This is structural entrapment where capital and its accumulation is primary regardless of its costs. 

Edited 11 hours ago by zazen

[Elliott]

19 minutes ago, zazen said:

Symbiotic doesn’t mean equal - tapeworms are symbiotic yet parasitic. The main issue isn't that both can benefit but the asymetric gain and trajectory of private capital eroding the sovereignty of a state. You don't see issue with a state needing to depend on a oligarch who can exercise their private interest at the expense of the national interest?  If it was such a ''win-win'' why did anti-trust laws come about? Because of public backlash and the fact that a state recognizes the structural vulnerability and lack of sovereignty it has in needing to depend on a private individual. You just read a headline about a titan like JP bailing out the government and get a MAGA hard on. Analyse things structurally and not just on the surface.

The trajectory from 1895 to 2008 in fact shows a initial power imbalance that has since become institutionalized to the point it is too big to fail. Over time - has private capital become more powerful or less? Has the sovereignty of the state become sub-ordinate to capital or less? JP Morgan was in the same class of actors referred to as Robber Barons. 

Google Morganization: ''Morganization refers to the late 19th-century business strategy of J.P. Morgan, involving consolidating rival companies, forming powerful trusts/monopolies (like U.S. Steel, General Electric), stabilizing industries, and attracting European investment by creating massive, profitable entities, fundamentally shaping American finance and leading to modern antitrust laws and private equity. It was a period of intense industrial consolidation and monopolization, creating vast wealth but also public backlash against "robber barons". 

We've been over this in another thread where you couldn't see the harm bankers caused because of the 2008 crisis and instead blamed consumer choices lol.

You said: ''What you're pointing at has been getting minimized even, not growing. Look back to Carnegie and JP Morgan for heavens sake, look up JP Morgan's bailout of the United States, (the bank bailed the country out).''

 JP Morgan manages assets worth $4 trillion. That's equivalent to the GDP of the 4-5 biggest economies - Japan or India. It has more firepower than the UK. When your larger than the GDP of most countries you don't just manage assets in the market but can govern and dictate the nature of the market by your decisions - you dictate to ''sovereign states''.

You become indispensable because of your size. If a state must guarantee your survival for stability - it introduces perverse incentives - the more recklessly you grow, the more certain the governments backstop becomes. Gains get privatized, costs get externalized and socialized.

 

To understand better:

If excess of capital isn't checked you get gremlins like Soros:

See how he says he acts a-morally ie not immorally. The issue with perverse or misaligned incentives is that actors don't have to hate the world and act with ''intent to harm''. They simply act with indifference. That's the alignment issue with AI also - not that it could act with malice to harm humans but that its cold indifference to humans can cause harm because it simply seeks to achieve its objective regardless of the cost to humans. The same way corporations seek to achieve their objective - one of them being the legally mandated fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.

From our other conversation ''Corporations have a fiduciary duty to serve private shareholder value - not people. People are served as as secondary order effect, but not as a primary motive. If a corporation can cut costs, hike prices and lobby for regulations that favor it at the expense of the consumer - they will. This is legally mandated - this is what I mean by the system being structurally rigged in favor of capital.''

Even if your a enlightened lovey dovey bhudda with good intentions as a CEO - you will be replaced by someone who will execute on that legal mandate. This is structural entrapment where capital and its accumulation is primary regardless of its costs. 

Ya, tapeworms save people's lives half the time don't they.... the ussr just needed more tapeworms apparently.

Edited 11 hours ago by Elliott