this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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Copyright and inheritance can’t exist in a capitalist society
Under true capitalism, everyone starts at 0 regardless of their birth and the only way to make more money than someone else is to work more hours regardless of profession. Over saturation of a given market is fixed by the invisible hand where people just move onto something that gives more hours
Workers aren't capitalists. The whole point of Capitalism is to ensure the ruling class never has to do the actual work. Capitalists make their money by exploiting workers, not working themselves.
Capitalists are people who own the means of production. Working in a capitalist system you will never earn enough to buy the factory. Inheritance is one of the main ways to become a capitalist. Sure some people get lucky but with few exceptions if you are rich the way you got rich was by exploiting other people .
Copyright was a halfway decent idea when it first came out. Give a chance for an artist or inventor to profit from their work for a few years and then it becomes public property. Thanks to corporations like Disney, that has all been twisted, and now it's used as a cudgel to keep others from competing and it takes almost 100 years for something to go out of copyright now (thanks congress).
A system where you do the work and get paid for your value is closer to Socialism than capitalism.
Now compare democracy with both systems.
Democracy is a form of government.
Capitalism and Socialism are economic systems.
You could have a Democratic Socialist system, if the majority of people wanted it.
You could have an Authoritarian Dictatorship that allowed Capitalism.
It's a little more complex because people are used to living under Capitalism and many people don't really understand Socialism and would fight against their own interest to revert to the status quo, as a result some socialist philosophers have suggested not giving people a choice but to accept socialism, a so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat", but even in such a system you could have a constitution that enshrines socialism as the the economic system, while still giving people the ability to vote on everything else.
For example "Private Property" could be abolished. Factories and business could be owned by all of the employees as a whole and the profits shared equitably. After a short time living in such a system it would be unlikely that the majority of people would vote to return power back over to just a few individuals.
This would likely depend on the transition going smoothly. Give people a little hardship and the knee jerk/reactionary response would be to proclaim they were "better off" before.
The main problem with Socialism is that people are so used to having 'rulers', that they simply do not know how to act in their absence. This creates a seeming 'power vacuum'. Unscrupulous individuals can use that fact as a way to assume the roles vacated by the formerly rich and powerful in the name of being a force that maintains the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat", when very often they seem to become dictators themselves.
In my personal opinion, violent revolution will always lead to that outcome. If we ever want to evolve as a society, people must first understand what Socialism actually is and why it's the best choice for the majority of people. We must freely choose it, because it's the right thing to do.
That is made extremely difficult because the rich and powerful like being rich and powerful, and will use every bit of their resources to ensure they stay rich and powerful. It's easier to convince cops to side with them to keep them in power by sharing a tiny bit of their wealth, than it is to convince them to do the right thing, when they aren't even sure what the right thing is.
There is a reason that Education is a political battleground in the US. If people were actually taught the truth, they probably would choose to do the right thing. The capitalists won't allow that to happen if they can help it.
Anytime you see someone trying to cut funding for education, or try to have a whitewashed version of history taught. This is the reason.
This is also the source of "Red Scare" propaganda and fear mongering. 'Keep people scared, ignorant, and confused' will probably be the subtitle of the last 100 years if they make a movie about it in the future, provided the Fascists and/or Capitalists don't win.
Edit: JFK once said "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." I think there is a lot of wisdom in that and I wish people in power would take it to heart, though I know they wont.
Copyright used to have a hard limit in years. Inheritance used to pack a substantial tax.
Then true capitalism will never exist. At best, it's a Platonic Ideal.
A society where no one has capital and the only way to get ahead is to provide more labour? And you call them steamed hams despite the fact they're obviously grilled?
The ideals of capitalism were to punish the rich land owners/nobles who were wealthy without ever working and empower the workers who were poor despite working for their whole lives
It’s a good lesson to teach that the wealthy would rather rebrand their image than give up wealth
Where are you getting this from?
The Wealth of Nations/Adam Smith
Well it's blatant propaganda. Think about it, when people got rid of kings and 'nobles', they didn't take the wealth from them. Those people stayed rich and invested that money into business. The ruling class never changed, they just changed job titles.
There has also never been a system (under capitalism) where peoples wealth is taken from them when they die.
The whole idea that under Capitalism everyone "Starts from 0" is just laughable.
Capitalism was never a punishment for nobles who didn't work, it was a way for them to continue to stay in power, and still not have to work.
The vast majority of wealthy people were born wealthy. The vast majority of people who start from 0 will die with basically 0.
Adam Smith himself was born wealthy.
Very occasionally, someone like a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs will come along and be successful, but they are the exceptions to the rule. And most of their wealth came from exploiting people.
A few professions could be a path for poor people to succeed, like for example Lawyers, but you have to have the money for Law School in the first place, so most of them came from well off parents.
Capitalism wouldn't exist if it were a fair system.
Hence this part, if you’re looking to change the system then you have to counter the rebrand and set up a system that can’t be undone
Sure. The way to counter the rebrand is to question it and call BS on it when you encounter it, expose it for what it actually is. That was the point of my post.
Just like the Bible, no one actually reads it