Say
This isn’t the gotcha that you think it is. Inflation is kept at a positive number on purpose. Deflation causes a self-reinforcing spiral that brings everyone’s wealth down. If inflation is too high that’s a problem too, but it’s less of a problem than deflation.
… With that said, the huge amount that prices have gone up recently is caused by corporate profiteering, which is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
A sane economic take on lemmy?! Blasphemy.
I’ll add this; Stop buying shit. I’m not talking rent and food. I’m talking “consumer confidence” stuff. If you don’t need it to live, stop.
Example; Ammo got wildly overpriced. So we stopped buying. Like magic, prices tanked! Ain’t that crazy?
Of course that’s stupid oversimplified, but the basic idea is sound.
Locally, people were bitching about Taco Bell’s quality. OK. Stop buying Taco Bell. They’ll either crash (that store) or correct. Win-win.
I would love a legislative way to stop corporations from wildly profiteering off our asses, but I don’t know what that looks like.
The corporations are absolutely aware that people have stopped being price conscious.
I understand everyone who can afford a $6 case of coca cola can also afford a $12 case. At some point you have to just choose not to buy it, or the price will just keep rising.
You spelled “corporate market manipulation” wrong.
I mean, you are the one making the logical fallacy of assuming they are defending the exact opposite… They’re basically just saying, “inflation bad”, and you come in and say, “deflation bad, too!”.
OK? They weren’t defending deflation? You even admit inflation has been out of hand lately…
Why does deflation bring your wealth down? If I saved miney in a deflationary period my purchasing power would go up. Deflation means the amount of goods you can buy with the same currency increases over time, inflation means the amount of goods you can buy over time goes down. So actually deflation makes your wealth go up it seems to me.
If you already have money, deflation is good for your net financial position, sure. If you work for your money, deflation could mean your boss has to either cut your wages, or fire you. Even if that money can buy more, people are very unwilling to take a pay cut.
That means if there’s a sudden (but small) drop in productivity in an industry, inflation can paper over it, and deflation amplifies it, and potentially means the industry collapses.
It’s good for you in the very short term, but bad quickly after that. It makes everyone want to hold onto their cash because your cash becomes more and more valuable the longer you hold on to it. So people start buying way less, and businesses bring in less and less money, so they lower prices more to try to entice you to buy, but the dropping prices only make you want to wait to buy even longer, this keeps spiraling downward and businesses keep bringing in less and less money, and so very soon they have to start firing people, and then more and more companies wind up out of business, causing more and more unemployment, and on and on and on, for everyone involved it all goes very bad.
Get your reason outta here and support a centralized economy like the rest of us!
Efficient at extracting wealth from humans
And giving all of that yummy wealth to a small handful of scummy humans.
Those aren’t humans.
It’s efficient at exploitation
I realize this isn’t really the place for this discussion but capitalism doesn’t know what the word “efficient” means. Is it efficient to have to buy the same thing twice? Is it efficient to only make cheap shitty and yet still overpriced versions of everything for the consuming public, shit that is designed to fail? Is pollution efficient? Is ruining everyone’s lives efficient? Pointless jobs? Rich people? These things are efficient the way fucking for virginity is efficient. The way Elon’s Twitter has been efficient. The way shitting the bed is efficient. Which is to say, it’s really fucking not.
Capitalism is the most efficient way of extracting as much value from one’s employees, and sales from one’s customers as possible.
Efficiency isn’t always a good thing, such as in this case.
It’s broader that that: it’s the most efficient way of extracting money from everything else in general.
Hence just how common it is to see large companies getting massive subsidies or having laws written to benefit them (notice, for example, the Disney Corporation rigging the system to extract more value from the broader society by getting the Copyright terms extended ahain and again), none of which is sales or employment related.
Capitalism doesn’t limit itself to things of a trading nature (which includes employment, which is basically people selling their work to others) and that’s the core of the problem with it: it naturally corrupts anything around it which can help provide not just trade advantages but even force the rest of society to give larger entities “free” money even outside trade (subsidies, bailouts) or forcing into being paid for that which would be naturally free (i.e. copyright, water rights, even land).
Some people think Crony Capitalism is not real Capitalism, but is actually real Capitalism in it’s purest form: the best ROI in this game of who makes the most money comes from buying the referees and those who make the rules.
Capitalism is effective at cleaning up inefficiency, at least if it’s allowed to run its course. Twitter, for instance: if it crashes and burns, all the talent in there will be free to move to doing something better instead. If it somehow succeeds, that’s a more obvious net benefit as well.
Is it efficient to only make cheap shitty and yet still overpriced versions of everything for the consuming public, shit that is designed to fail?
Why do people buy cheap and shitty things?
Is it efficient to have to buy the same thing twice?
What is this referring to? Obviously not efficient.
Pointless jobs?
That’s a total waste, and these would be removed in an efficient market.
Rich people?
In a free market system, rich people happen because they’ve provided something that others want, or made good investments.
Is pollution efficient?
Pollution is indeed a problem that require global solutions. CO2 markets, for instance, are a thing.
Is it efficient to have to buy the same thing twice?
capitalism is only good at stealing wealth from the working class
What about space travel? Preclaimer: I’m a physics student. Before SpaceX and Indian companies, one ESA launch cost like 500 million dollars, which was impossible to achieve for scientists without direct ESA funding. Now, suddenly physicists can launch small satellites with less than a million.
Companies that are structured to maximize short term shareholder value need to make extra profits at all costs.
Supply lines were strained during the pandemic, which led to drastic price increases. Supply lines stabilized and the pandemic subsidized. Prices didn’t go down? Why?
Because the companies that set prices need to make more money this quarter to make the shareholders happy. And they bribe the politicians and the judges and the regulators to control the system at every level.
These rich assholes doomed our world to destruction and our “leaders” were too greedy and small minded to stop them.
Enjoy the ride down
Efficient at producing profit, is essentially what it means. The definitions are utterly twisted.
Which in a properly competed market equals producing wealth for everyone.
Oh you cad, it does not mean that and you know it.
It is efficient, in increasing the wealth of the wealthy.
Capitalism isn’t concerned with efficiency, merely the most direct route to monopoly.
Because regulations
The idiot right
I’m guessing aliens
Because unregulated capitalism gets wiley the more rope you let out.
deleted by creator
Me: Fox News
that’s what it’s efficient at!
Aliens.
It’s weird that some people completely understand the following concept: if you don’t understand something, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. But at the same time are unable to apply this concept to economics.
If you’re a left-leaning person (in economic politics) and have an open mind, I suggest https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730 – but I’m sure there are other respectable economics who have written easy to understand distillations of the basic theories. I mean actually reading Marx & Engels will give you many of these theories as well, even if a few centuries out-of-date and without the current knowledge on how applying some of their own theories went (= incredibly badly).
Greed.
