• rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes. Capitalism is private ownership over the means of production. Slavery serves capitalism very well, even if it didn’t invent slavery.

      • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If a CEO finds out that he can get slaves to do the work for free instead of spending money on it they have an obligation to the shareholders to do what makes the company the most money.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The only reason corporations aren’t doing chattel slavery in the U.S. right now is that they’re legally barred from it.

          • Haagel@lemmings.world
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            1 year ago

            I just heard an NPR story about US Steel Corp using chattel slavery less than a hundred years ago. They worked people to death and buried them in unmarked graves.

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        That’s a simplification

        Mercantilism had private ownership of production

        Capitalism is pay based on hours worked (only way to get rich is to work more hours than someone else)

          • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, capitalism was drawn up to prevent that

            Turns out that people with money/power will influence laws to their own benefit

        • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t understand your point. The most important feature of capitalism is the private ownership of capital. Capitalism isn’t “hustle, fuck bitches get money” or whatever. Money and wage labor goes back to the founding of civilization. It isn’t a new invention.

          • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            So did private ownership

            That wasn’t what Capitalism was about

            In the wealth of nations Smith talks great lengths about the labourer being king of the market not the landowners and that with advancement in technology costs should go down except land owners prevent that

            The whole system is supposed to favour the labourer compared to Mercantilism where the rich got richer because they owned the production

            It also praised the American colonies for open immigration saying they could double their population faster than anyone in Europe and that would double their economy

            • Haagel@lemmings.world
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              1 year ago

              I think one of the main problems with Smith’s conception of capitalism is that he didn’t account for how huge and pervasive and intrusive advertising would become. He naively assumed that the best product would dominate the market when actually people will buy whatever is thrust in front of the their eyes a thousand times a day.

              And of course corporate lobbying wasn’t such an issue in his time.

              • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                We have term limits for governments but not for corporations

                Their ability to last indefinitely allows them more control than anyone thought possible

                And no matter what system you choose; they will act in self interest that will allow them to expand/erode the system to benefit themselves

              • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                1 year ago

                No, the problem with Smith’s capitalism is that he’s constantly misrepresented

                He was descriptive, not prescriptive. He was not an advocate of capitalism, he was explaining it - and if you read the wealth of nations and your takeaway was “Lassie Faire capitalism is a good idea”, reread it

                • Haagel@lemmings.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I appreciate your critique but I’ve got to be honest and say that I’m not going to spend any more time in my life trying to justify late stage capitalism. It will eventually be replaced and pass into history like every other economic system, if it doesn’t kill us first. 💣

                  • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                    1 year ago

                    My point is that Adam Smith wasn’t really an advocate of capitalism, he explained it and made a strong case for the necessity of regulation

                • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  And we know now that his analysis on the outcome of capitalism is incorrect. Capitalism exists for the private property holders to extract as much wealth and power as possible from their privileged position. That unrelenting pursuit of profit has led to even worse inequality, and is collapsing entire ecosystems. It’s a disaster of an economic system full of contradictions. Those contradictions are now causing capitalism to collapse in on itself.

                  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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                    1 year ago

                    So you realize that the problems with capitalism are what it set out to prevent

                    That doesn’t make the core of capitalism the opposite

                    That means it’s not true capitalism

                    The problem is greed that will exist in any system because people with power will degrade/morph any system to be self serving

          • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            You really should read Wealth of Nations

            We don’t live in a capitalist society, it’s important to note because the “dream of capitalism” is impossible to achieve

              • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                So you know capitalism paints that landowners are bad and the labourer as essentially

                Claims the labourer should be the one that gets the money

                Claims money should be given out based of effort

                But you think giving money out based on effort is a bad definition for it

                That’s right?

    • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      The private economy is the main source of the rise, while state-enforced labour counts for one in seven cases of modern slavery, the report adds.

      I wonder if mandatory military service counts for “state-enforced labor”

      • Haagel@lemmings.world
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        1 year ago

        The UN sponsored report uses a pretty liberal definition of slavery to include things like wage theft (which forces workers to stay at a job until they’re fully compensated), sex trafficking, and domestic servitude where the servant’s documents are confiscated so that they can’t flee.

        However, there’s still a hell of a lot whips and chains slavery in Africa and South East Asia. Those slaves serve the excavation and manufacturing industries.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Okay, this may come off as unemphatetic but I love the fact that slavery doesn’t give a shit about your sex or wealth. Like, the percentages are almost fully equal, save for actual low income that is almost double what the other percentages are. Other than that, all are equal in the eyes of slavers.

      Shit’s wild. What’s also wild is that these numbers still exists…especially when thinking about Americas or Europe. :|