To think that capitalism is shit?

[malificent7]

Just reading about the clothing sweat shops in Leister where sewing machinists are paid as little as 4.50 an hour and packers £3 an hour. Meanwhile the owner of Boohoo is a billionaire. Plus fast fashion is highly polluting.
This is just one industry. How come so many of us are willing to work for rich capitaliats while we scrape by?
Capitalism is shit isn't it?

Little bit naive OP

Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. Socialism doesn’t really have a great record...hundreds of millions of people dying because of it

It is just so ‘meme generation’ to say capitalism is shit because of one shitty company.

Bet you started this thread on your smart phone though eh?

Until people want this, we will be getting newsreports like that 🤷🏻

Buy less, but better.

People don't need 3 full wardrobes of stuff...

Yes but we are all helping the cyclw continue. Do you check where your clothes are made? Will you stop buying from primary, Bohol or all the other companies that use capitalism to make profits? If not, then stop complaining.

I personally do not shop in those places due to this very reason but instead of complaining I wish people would put their money where their mouth is and stop buying the shite.

If you don't buy it then fair enough and YANBU

Next, as a comparison, has a huge team of people designed to check for exactly these scenarios. They go worldwide checking standards in factories.
Then why has it taken until yesterday for Next to drop Boohoo?

Agree that a mixed economy would be a good thing. State intervention in areas that affect us all like health and social care, education, police and prisons, probation, none of this outsourcing to companies that have no experience in the field but can outbid eveyone else and then pay their workers a pittance, adequate funding of local authorities so they can provide decent services. Why is this so difficult for a western and incredibly wealthy country ?

@malificent7

I never said that socialism was the answer...i just said that capitalism is shit! I am made the point about Boohoo as it is a capitalist business model. 1% of the population own the wealth whilst 99% of workers work for rich capitalist as wage slaves ( hopefully on more than 3£ an hour.) Plus it is wasteful. Take plastic bottles and other throwaway items. The capitalist driving this economy relies on plastic bottles to have a short life span so that people buy more plastic bottles etc. Communism sounds shite too tbh but a happy medium would be good.

Errr, we have a happy medium. People are guaranteed a minimum wage and working conditions for supplying their labour. They are guaranteed funding for survival even if they don’t (through benefits). If employers choose to ignore the minimum wage and working conditions, they are breaking the law. It doesn’t make capitalism shit. It makes law enforcement shit. And sure some people think minimum wage should be higher (I am one of them), but if you think happy medium is that a risk taking business person should not fully own the fruits that the risk taking produces and that people providing labour should have an automatic share in this, then that is socialism/communism.

It's not capitalism that's the problem, it's people.

If people boycotted products that are produced by cheap labour, things would change. If people consumed less, consumerism would change.

The trouble with the UK is that people have to be told what to do all the time, they can't think for themselves. So they are a capitalist's dream.

It would be really good if you started an AMA about that and linked it here.
I don't feel mature enough for that, to be honest. I tried arguing with people based on my own experiences before, and I got back statements like "well, poverty in the UK is the worst in the world now, so what do you know" and once a bollocking from a person with a similar origin who alleged that I am lying because she had servants and foreign holidays as a child, so the iron curtain must be a work of fiction (of course, it had later it transpired that her father was a very high ranking diplomat).

How are people supposed to know places use suppliers that pay under minimum wage in the UK? I'd guess that most people assume the cheaper items are made abroad.

We don't have a fully capitalist society although it is capitalist leaning. We have controls on wages and so on.

Communist societies don't work. Didn't someway say it's a very good idea until other people's money runs out?

Should the boss also be on £4.50 an hour?

@malificent7 tbh capitalism isn’t really the issue here. Nor is Boohoo. We have a minimum wage in the uk which HMRC are supposed to enforce. That’s what gone wrong here, nothing to do with “capitalism”.

We have a mixed economy in the uk anyway not pure capitalism.

I can't believe that Boohoo didn't know about this before. I also have a feeling that many, many people knew about this before but opted to keep quiet. It's only now that it's directly affecting those with money and power that it's come to light.
Capitalism works when the balance of power is correct, but when the largest corporations force those in power to make decisions it can't work.

@firstmentat as a pp said please could you start an AMA about your experience.

I'm probably being very naive but don't understand why the workers in Leicester were/are prepared to work for less than National Minimum Wage.

Is it that the workers are illegal immigrants?

Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than anything else it is our best tool to Lift people out of poverty and create opportunity and support public services. It is a great leveller. Socialism has never worked and has devastated countries. In practice it is a disaster. Capitalism is not perfect and leads to unequal wealth whereas socialism leads to mass poverty. For those who long for socialism feel free to move to a socialist country....thought not. Refugees and migrants flee to capitalist countries, there is no flow in the opposite direction. Why?

We have a minimum wage in the uk which HMRC are supposed to enforce.
Presumably info sent by the Leicester company to HMRC is falsified?

You don’t seem to understand what capitalism is, it can come in many different forms, you’ve just taken one version and generalised (I agree, the industrialist sweatshop model is shit). Not all capitalism is extractive.

Capitalism is a lot like democracy. It’s a terrible system with a lot of flaws and a lot of gaps but it’s the best system we have. It’s better than being enslaved under socialism or communism at any rate.

I wish I could invite all the misty-eyed wannabe communists to my childhood, which actually WAS spent in a communist country.
I live in an ex-communist country and at least half of my acquaintance would happily go back to communism, but then these people are on the breadline/underemployed/pensioners who worry every day how they will pay their bills. At least under communism they had jobs and a decent life standard. The people hate or make fun of communism in this country are mostly middle-class, because they saw their situation improving under capitalism eg. they now have more money and more things to do with it, travel abroad etc. So I guess everyone's experience is different and the fact that you grew up in a communist country makes you one of many. If you were referring to lack of freedom of speech and the police state in your comment, these are signs of a dictatorship and not of socialism. There have been and still are lots of right wing/anti-communist dictatorships around the world in countries with no freedom of speech or other human rights.

@malificent7

I never said that socialism was the answer...i just said that capitalism is shit! I am made the point about Boohoo as it is a capitalist business model. 1% of the population own the wealth whilst 99% of workers work for rich capitalist as wage slaves ( hopefully on more than 3£ an hour.) Plus it is wasteful. Take plastic bottles and other throwaway items. The capitalist driving this economy relies on plastic bottles to have a short life span so that people buy more plastic bottles etc. Communism sounds shite too tbh but a happy medium would be good.

No, neither of those are a “capitalist business model” Not boohoo with your 1% and 99% wealth inequality and not the plastic bottle example either. You are repeating idiotic nonsense you’ve read online and really really need to take a class in basic economics.

@GoshHashana

Capitalism is disgusting.

DH has just joined the Communist party, and part of his "initiation" was to read a text called Britain's Road to Socialism. I read it too, and it's such a hopeful breath of fresh air.

We COULD be a socialist country. We almost have been in the past.

Its actually the complete opposite. Capitalism is the only thing that gives is our freedoms as individuals.

Communism is just heading down a road to genocide. Can you give an example of a single country thats suceeded under communism? Venezuela? USSR? Romania? I think at least 20 million starved to death deliberately in USSR.

Meanwhile capitalism gives you the good things you have, the cushy life you enjoy and has pulled and is pulling the poorest in the world out of poverty.

Just for the record, poverty is considered as earning less than £1.50 a day, so while £4 an hour is bad by our standards, by world standards thats wealthy.

We shouldnt get jealous what others make, we should just be concerned that our own lives are improving which they are, and are at the best standard of living than any other time in history, thanks to capitalism.

The Danish system works well as people are on good wages, high taxes pay for a good welfare system but it is easy to be a start up business, entrepreneurs generate productivity/money and they seem to do all this working fewer hours!

I recommend the book Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. A short easy read but brilliant. Sad that Mark Fisher is no longer with us.

@bgmama

Does not really ring true to me, unless it is one of the fringe / A8 countries (which have actually never been "communist", but rather in a grey zone). I don't know much about Asian or Lat Am countries too, I was referring only to my experience.
Apart from people 70+, I don't know anyone who is nostalgic for Soviet times. At least now you are able, you know, to buy and read a book not from a list pre-approved by the party.

@SonEtLumiere

Also it's the lack of regulation that destroyed capitalism. The deregulation that started in the 80s that allowed mega corporations and mergers to create all these billionaires and greed is good.

The lack of regulation IS capitalism! The point is accumulating wealth and power and then using it to accumulate even more wealth and power...such as by relaxing regulations, buying politicians and elections, whatever is needed.

That's what I mean about too much is a bad thing (whether it's capitalism or anything else). You need regulation or human nature and human greed will destroy it.

Capitalism has literally collapsed twice; in 1929 and 2008. The banks were bailed out in 2008, that's not capitalism, capitalism is free markets, if you fail you fail.