Forrest Brown

@peterbrown@mastodon.scot Yes, the single payer healthcare systems in many European countries as well as other social safety net features exist because of socialism. They are quasi-socialist systems. Europe has them for the same reason the US got the New Deal during the Great Depression — when wealth inequality gets really bad, like it is in the US and many other countries right now, and ordinary people can barely get by, socialist revolution starts to sound really appealing to lots of people. Europe’s social democracies are the result of governments essentially trying to strike a balance between socialism and capitalism, as I’m sure you know.

@jlou@mastodon.social Added to my “watch later” list!

@peterbrown@mastodon.scot This is how the US and many other countries have essentially become modern feudal economies with CEOs instead of lords and kings. Every industry essentially operates as cartels run by ~5 corporations. These cartels in turn buy out the government and start clawing back control from everyday people. Using the US as an example because it is still the bastion of concentrated, global capitalist power. I’m not suggesting a “pure” socialist alternative because, again, no such thing exists. Furthermore, socialism is an iterative project based on core principles and observed critiques of existing systems. There’s no manual on how to build or run a socialist country. Karl Marx would probably be baffled by how China’s economy works today since it’s a predominantly socialist government that runs a virtualized capitalist economy within it.

@peterbrown@mastodon.scot I haven’t suggested that pure forms of “isms” are good, nor do I have a fixation on them. They also don’t exist, as you note. Trying to compare socialism vs capitalism is a false equivalence. I disagree, for instance, that socialism suppresses individual enterprise. Capitalism does this (and this gets at a core failure of capitalism, which is that, without very strict regulation, capitalism always leads to monopolies). It’s extremely difficult to start a viable business that provides a living wage in the US, for example. Assuming you have startup capital or access to funding in the first place, you then have to compete with multinational corporations who will engage in non-competitive behavior the second they have reason to believe you might be making money — usually either by making a cheap knockoff or flat-out stolen design of your product or service and selling it below market price until they price you out or by acquiring your business and buying you out. That’s not to mention the cost of health insurance, which you probably just won’t have for you or your employees because privatization has made health insurance so astronomically expensive (another result of capitalism). These things are features, not bugs, of most existing types of capitalist economies. Capitalism without strict regulation and oversight naturally causes extremely concentrated wealth accumulation, creating power that inevitably eclipses that of government by the people.

@peterbrown@mastodon.scot They *might* have oil, and they apparently don’t have a problem with ramping up oil prospecting in the hopes that they can lease oil fields to drillers. And even if there was no oil involved at all, there still remain serious systemic issues with capitalism that have nothing to do with climate. I should also note that I’m not suggesting socialism is a silver bullet for addressing climate change, although China is a pretty compelling case study in socialism being able to respond way faster and more appropriately to climate change. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jan/30/like-dropping-a-bomb-why-is-clean-energy-leader-uruguay-ramping-up-the-search-for-oil

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @violetmadder@kolektiva.social I’ll just say this seems like an asinine distinction and leave it at that for now. If you want to keep talking and having a good faith discussion about it I’m happy to do that, I’m just not available to talk anymore rn! Again, I’m on vacation at the moment and have already spent too much time on my phone.

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @violetmadder@kolektiva.social Also I’m sorry but I have to be done replying here now — I’m on vacation and I’m spending too much time on social media haha.

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @violetmadder@kolektiva.social Because the other thing they teach you in business school is that the only variable cost you can actually sort of control as a capitalist is what you pay your employees. You are taught to pay people as little as you can. Unions are all but nonexistent in the US because it’s almost functionally illegal to unionize in many “right to work” states, like mine (Georgia). So you end up with a situation where the company collectively bargains on its behalf and makes a killing while the worker cannot collectively bargain with other workers and gets paid poverty wages. That’s why it’s not mutually beneficial. The capitalist owns the means of production (the factory, the software, whatever) so the worker doesn’t own their work. Therefore the capitalist reaps all the surplus value from the sale of their goods and services — value that only exists because of the worker’s labor. The worker derives enough benefit to stay alive and eke out a meager living, if we’re talking about the actual working class (and in many cases they don’t even earn that), and the capitalists buy yachts and vacation homes.

@violetmadder@kolektiva.social @AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social Yeah, exactly. It’s not a mutually beneficial relationship even though that’s how the capitalist tries to bill it.

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @violetmadder@kolektiva.social I don’t mean to sound rude but this strikes me as pedantic. It feels like we’re narrowing in on semantics a bit too much and missing the bigger picture. By “exploit” in this context, I mean someone in a position of power (a capitalist) is taking advantage of or screwing over someone with little to no power (a worker). Not that labor is a free market (and to your earlier point that housing isn’t a free market — absence of free markets does not equal “no capitalism,” but that’s a tangent for another discussion) but the typical, mainstream portrayal of the labor market as a simple supply and demand marketplace where: A. Capitalists have a need for labor - and B. Workers have a need for money to afford the basic necessities of life - and so C. The two enter a mutually beneficial working relationship in which the capitalist basically rents or leases the worker’s labor and the worker receives a salary/wage …is, at best, not factually accurate, and, at worst, a cynical portrayal by the ruling class of what’s actually going on, given that it’s majorly in a capitalist’s best interests to obfuscate the truth about what’s going on in labor agreements between a capitalist and a worker. Your meaning of “exploit” is more like “use.” Sure, a valid dictionary definition of exploit, but you’re talking about an entirely different context. Pointing out that these words mean different things in different contexts is basically just a red herring.

@peterbrown@mastodon.scot I’m glad you brought up Uruguay because it’s an interesting case study. Not because it’s an example of capitalism working but because it clearly demonstrates the limits of sustainability under capitalism. I appreciate your optimism but I fully reject any notion of regenerative capitalism. A couple years ago, journalist Amy Westervelt and her team did a deep dive on what’s going on in Guyana with ExxonMobil: https://news.mongabay.com/podcast/2023/04/guyana-gets-drilled-weighing-south-americas-latest-oil-boom-with-amy-westervelt/ It seems like a similar thing is now happening with Uruguay and Chevron: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jan/30/like-dropping-a-bomb-why-is-clean-energy-leader-uruguay-ramping-up-the-search-for-oil This is not even to mention Norway, the world’s leader in EV adoption and a massive oil producer. These countries are actually great examples of how capitalism shifts, hides, or ignores negative externalities.

@eq@mas.to You would think so! Capitalism is one hell of a drug

@hosford42@techhub.social @RD4Anarchy@kolektiva.social lol seemed like a reply guy/bot so I just ignored. Hilarious that y’all recognize the account though.

This is why it’s essentially illegal to be homeless in America. Not because someone wrote a law that says, “Being homeless is illegal,” but because the conditions created by capitalism essentially make it a baked-in legal precedent. #capitalism #anticapitalist

In other words, capitalism maintains the fallout from the consequences of its exploitation by making criminals of its biggest victims, i.e., the poor. You reach a certain level of poverty that is, for all intents and purposes, illegal under the kind of state we have in the West that protects the interests of corporations over everyday people. #capitalism #anticapitalist

It might have been Naomi Klein who said something like this first (sorry, my memory escapes me), but capitalism functions by ignoring the externalities and criminalizing the side effects. #capitalism #anticapitalist

The biggest thing that radicalized me (besides climate change inaction + covid) was honestly going to business school and having economics professors — very much devoted capitalists themselves — look you in the eyes and tell you capitalism requires someone to be exploited to function, whether that’s a group of people, animals, the environment, or whatever. It is inherently destructive and extractive. #capitalism #anticapitalist