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?

Start your own business and don't be a wage slave

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if something is sold more cheaply than something else very similar, then there is a reason for that: it's either cheap labour, cheap materials, or low overheads (unsuitable factories etc), or all of these.

What system would you recommend to replace capitalism OP? Socialism doesn't work too well either.

You were convinced by an article, you might want to come back after real life experience of alternatives to capitalism. It’s not capitalism that is ruining society and the planet, it’s greed and lack of integrity. Who needs integrity when we have individualist culture of “I’m alright Jack”.

If you're not paying for it financially, someone, somewhere is paying for it with their life. (Their lifestyle and quality of life, and in some cases their actual life).

I think lockdown has made a lot of people realise that the genuinely don't need £100 of new clothes every month or to just pop to the shops for one thing and buy ten.

I do my best with clothes - I alter and convert clothes that don't fit, I rag or recycle clothes that are worn out, I donate clothes that are still good. I have a DD and a DS so I buy broadly unisex items and only the odd sex specific item (like a school pinafore). They don't wear them out before they outgrow them so I use them twice then rag/recycle/donate them.

When I do but new things I try to do it via small, independent business, as local as possible.

[quote Lua]@HRH2020 - You hit the nail on the head. The talk is always about "socialist eat little children", never about capitalism is really good for the rich...

i agree with you OP. is also so amazing, as you have seen that one cannot criticize capitalism, without immediatly becoming a communist-lover! Sweden is supposedly socialist....not that I care aboiut the labels. They are not eating the animals in the zoo... they do tax everyone, particularly top earners.[/quote]
Sweden is not socialist. Please look up the definitions. The lack of understanding is borderline ignorance.

@alisonjabub we are certainly leaving it late, but it's not too late, yet, if you take carbon removal from the atmosphere into account. But we need to crack on with testing that technology. I've just been reading 'what we need to do now, for a zero carbon future' by Chris Goodall. Some of it is eminently doable. Some of it is really hard. All of it needs concerted and urgent action that only governments can instigate.

[quote firstmentat]@Hopeforall
I am probably overreacting to threads like that because my ex-MIL (British) is exceptionally left wing and constantly campaigning for the communist rule over Britain, trying to gaslight me into how great had Soviet Union been (she's been on a fancy trip to Moscow in the 90s, she certainly knows!). On the other hand, she is very comfortably well-off through the means I as a foreigner cannot quite fully understand, but she insists she lives on very little, as a true communist. Apart from her horses, who must cost a couple grand to run, but that's animal welfare, not capitalist greed. And the mansion house, but that's cultural heritage of the people and anyway her trust pays for it. And her children went to expensive boarding schools, but that's because she had literally no other option as she had to concentrate on her studies for the betterment of the society. Was quite a unique experience for me. On the other hand, she is clearly very well educated and usually a pleasure to debate with - she can maintain a very decent conversation about literally anything in the world, but the evils of capitalism is a massive trigger point for some reason [/quote]
Yes some animals are more equal than others.

@malificent7

Well the business owner may well be taking risks ( often with their large wedge of capital) but how much actual hard graft are they doing really?

Wow, really not sure how to respond to such ill informed thinking. But here goes. Hard graft does not result in scientific advancement, in R&D breakthroughs, in economies of scale or indeed any other progress that humans have made. It’s risk taking, enterprise and wealth creation funding that results in all the fruits of capitalism you enjoy.

They're not teaching critical thinking skills in schools any more,are they?

@firstmentat, Why do you think it's only 70+ aged-people who are nostalgic for communism today? It's because they are the only ones alive today who actually experienced communism as adults when they were younger. Everyone below 50 years old who grew up in the ex-soviet countries experienced communism as a child or a teenager, so their views of it are limited and heavily influenced by the views of their family. Re: your comment about not being able to read the books you wanted, as I said the same thing happens in right-wing dictatorships. Socialism is about equality, not about restricting human rights.

@bgmama

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.

This - I had a acquaintance from a former Iron curtain country. He had travelled to Western Europe quite a bit. He preferred the cultural experiences (theatre etc) he could get at home to fancy cars/cameras/clothes etc.

The trouble is that the price of things don't reflect their true cost.

For those of us who don’t have entrepreneurial spirit, capitalism provides an easy route to earning a living. We don’t have to create something for ourselves, which takes a lot of risk and 18 hour days to get started,
We can earn more by developing skills or gaining knowledge. It offers mobility and opportunity.
There are safeguards in place. They need to be applied, but don’t condemn the entire system for one small area with problems.

@bgmama
Could you maybe name one of the right-wing dictatorships you mention? I apologise for my ignorance.

Refugees and migrants flee to capitalist countries, there is no flow in the opposite direction. Why? The very vast majority of those refugees and migrants come from capitalist countries. Most of the poorest, war-torn countries in the world are capitalist.

I had a acquaintance from a former Iron curtain country. He had travelled to Western Europe quite a bit.
See, exactly this. Everyone who had travelled "quite a bit" from behind the iron curtain to Western Europe could have belonged only to the party or military elite, and "cultural experiences" at home for that person were perhaps not very ordinary either. It is a very biased sample.

This isn’t what communism is anymore than the some of the definitions of capitalism that are being thrown around.

LemonTT what is communism?

Why is it up to Boohoo, Next et al to police these companies? Where is the outcry against the people who are actually paid to represent and protect the interests of the people of Leicester, that is the MPs and local councillors? How is it they didn't know about these issues? If they didn't know, why didn't they? If they did know, why didn't they do something about it?

And where is the outcry and threatened boycott of Tesco, for example, who have reportedly given suppliers until 10 July to agree to accept lower prices? www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53284788

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?

Because in the biggest capitalist countries they can always print more money or bail out the banks when the system collapses. When socialist countries fail they get hit with international sanctions.

Too much of either is a disaster though. Capitalism just has artificial measures to save it when it collapses.

Why is it up to Boohoo, Next et al to police these companies?

Why isn't it their responsibility? They're facilitating it, and they should be aware of their supply chain.

And lets be honest, if they're recieving paying peanuts for their stuff, they know that those involved in making it aren't making a full wage.

Selfish, unpleasant people will always find their way into power. It doesn't matter what kind of regime it's under - capitalist, socialist, communist... if self serving dickheads get into power (which they usually manage to do) it all turns to shit.

@firstmentat
here you go: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_dictatorship
I don't want to out myself, but I come from one of the countries mentioned in the article and the people in my country experienced the same loss of human rights you are describing, as a result of right-wing dictatorship.

Of course the Boohoo top team know about the sweatshops. It's the entire basis of the business. Good on the Sunday Times exposing this. I'd say the local politicians knew too but we're too chicken to do anything about it.

Everyone below 50 years old who grew up in the ex-soviet countries experienced communism as a child or a teenager, so their views of it are limited and heavily influenced by the views of their family.
Well, it is true. I still remember the rich cultural experience of being left at the age of 4 or 5 to hold a place in a queue to buy milk for a couple of hours, with a queue number written on my hand by a kind lady in ink, as I kept forgetting it. Not because my parents were neglectful - they are the best anyone could wish for - but because one of them was queuing to buy bread in a different shop and the other one had to travel to a different city as there was a rumour that someone dodgy was selling children's shoes through the back door of the factory there. But at least there weren't any evil capitalists exploiting us.