Asklemmy

You're coming off fairly condescending. Leftists of many stripes not only have thorough critiques of Capitalism, but offer a wide range of solutions, both legislative and grass-roots.

There may be a lot of ranting, but most of it is based within robust theory and legislative efforts.

Strengthening unions and workers rights laws is almost always advocated for. Weakening the ability for corporations to exploit their workers and the general population/environment is another.

I'm an Agorist, that means I advocate fighting Capitalism from the ground up using grey and black markets to subvert existing Capitalist structures.

So acquiring and distributing pirated materials like college textbooks and otherwise expensive software is one example. Helping people jailbreak/hack their devices to run unofficial software that the corporations don't approve of is another.

There's lots of information out there, don't mistake memes and ranting for empty idealism.

The youtube channel, Economics Explained, has a lot of great videos on macroeconomic concepts. They recently featured a video on Norway pointing out how it handles its economy near perfectly.

The video explains Norway got pretty lucky, and it's not like every country could straight up copy them and succeed, but the major points are:

1. Their massive natural resource reserves are majority owned by the government. The government puts the profits from this into stable long term investments to benfit the citizens of the country. In many other countries, natural resources have been sold to private companies for a one time payment and private shareholders now benefit from the long term investment.
2. Their government has one of the highest tax rates in the world, even though they earn so much profit from natural resources they could literally have a 0% tax rate. Despite this massive tax rate, Norway has some of the lowest emigration of people and companies. Nobody has fled the country due to high taxes like many fear would happen elsewhere.
3. Their government spends heavily on social welfare and ensuring a high quality of life for all of its citizens, and their companies provide short work weeks and long vacations, which are huge reasons why nobody has left.

I think when people say they hate capitalism, what they mean is they hate working 50 hour weeks at a job they hate for a boss who treats them like dirt for a salary that doesn't even pay their rent while the CEO has more wealth than small nations and spends it on eating endangered animals on their mega yatch with politicians and judges who then pass laws making it legal to hire children and dump garbage into the ocean. They don't really care about private companies and investments, they care about how sociopathic greed has become so normal that it's actively defended.

Tax the rich, regulate industry, punish CEOs and boards for crimes committed by corporations.

First off, wealth and power are the same thing and must be dealt with at the same time. So for a start…

1. Aggressive progressive taxation, up to 100% (billionaires - even 9-figure multimillionaires- must never be allowed to exist).

2. Abolish stock markets.

3. All companies must be employee-owned. Employees share equitable ownership of the companies they work within. Profits are shared only among employees.

4. Criminalize political spending, lobbying (aka bribery), etc. Candidates all draw from a public fund and platforms and that is all they may use.

5. Aggressive market regulation to protect competition and prevent consolidation. Our failure to protect the market from excess consolidation and integration is the primary reason we’ve reached the late-stage capitalism hellscape we currently exist within.

Again, this is a start… the tip of the iceberg.

There is a massive amount of leftist documentation on economics. We’re not all communists, but we recognize that any system devoid of regulation/oversight/accountability will always quickly travel rightward and become authoritarian. So the question is what systems and policies can be put in place to ensure not only equity for all, but equity that remains stable indefinitely (or as close as is possible).

Are you unaware of the vast corpus of leftist texts about just this? Do you think leftists are just teenagers on TikTok?

I support any policy that increases competition or against policies that remove competition. Public companies need great justification to merge. The vast majority of the food we buy is run by like 4 companies.

Return to pre-Reagan tax codes and laws. Bring back the 90% tax rate.

EPI.org has a lot of solutions I support.

Personally, I want to see the removal of capitalism, as it is a terrible system, alongside other oppressive systems like the State. Because that doesn’t happen overnight, and it isn’t something congress would ever vote on, I support strong social systems, high taxes on the wealthy and corporations, strong environmental protections, and especially legislation that strengthens communities. Strong worker protections and benefits wouldn’t be bad to see either.

there is such a variation from what I see. Some anti capitalist are just anti corporatist while others would throw out the whole idea of buying/selling.

I believe that Capitalism is great to get out a country of poverty and developed into a advance economy with wealth build for all of citizens. But just think about this : infinite grow? Does it make sense? For us humans and for the planet? So companies can keep breaking profit records each year. In my opinion that a very unstable system , we have finite resources on earth and we should instead reuse them and make them more reusable so in that case probably infinite grow can make sense. But since that cost money and then it will harm grow and everyone will freak out that a company didn't grow more than last year but still made billions.

Well, for starters:

1. Platforms. I don't believe that the people who create, or invest in, large internet platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Uber, Booking, Upwork, etc, have a natural or moral right of ownership to said platform. They should certainly receive returns on their investment - but they shouldn't have full operational control. Instead, as the platofrm grows, operational control should slowly transition to its users. eventually, they should have the final say on, in the case of YouTube. what content in acceptable, what procedures should be used to remove unacceptable content, how to appeal, etc.
2. Employment. One of the big issues I see is that employees are under someone's direct control for 1/3 of each day, and have to do what their boss says. And while they technically consented to that relationship, I don't see that consent as freely given, because for most people there isn't a viable alternative. This could be done through more worker cooperative, or encouraging freelancing. Even for people who decide to remain in traditional employment, they should have more official control than they do now.
3. AI. It seems many people here hate AI, but AI does have the potential for large productivity gains. And while, in the past, productivity gains have note resulted in less work, but rather higher GDP, we could always force the issue. After all, people did it ~100 years ago, and the economy didn't collapse because of that.

I think capitalism can work fine if we limit the amount of stuff any one person can own. Having a few million $ seems fine to me, but everything above that leads to problems. I know this sounds like a very simple measure, but it would have huge implications.

So, capitalism is itself defined more than one way depending on who's talking, and I only have a problem with some versions of it:

In the sense that certain people get to just own stuff, while others have to work, I'd say capping wealth at like 7 digits would be a simple solution. You can save up a few million across a high-earning but normal career, but nobody makes it to 8 unless they're a bigshot. Over time random social mobility should hopefully smooth out the remainder of class distinctions. If not, maybe 6 digits, although some dentists are going to be pissed.

In the sense that we organise our economy around profit motive and competition, I don't have an issue with it because it seems to work well. If you need to buy something, there's always somebody selling it and vice-verse. If you look at history, or at the crazy supply chains that exist to facilitate that, it's quite an achievement.

In the sense that people privately own the means of production, there's a bit of a trick deciding what the means of production even are. A foundry definitely counts, and a toothbrush definitely doesn't, but what about a van, which you could use personally or to transport people? You could licence them separately depending on use, but then you couldn't work as a "rideshare" even if there was a major shortage of taxis, which is dumb red tape. It's far more productive to talk about things in terms of their market value rather than getting any more granular, which is why the law usually does that.

Keep the present system but add way more rules.

The price of a good is a percentage of your wealth. For example, bread costs 0.01% of your wealth.

Just like how a fixed-fine legal penalty is a law for the poor, fixed-price goods (especially essentials) are much more burdensome for the poor.