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[–] Mylon ago  (edited ago)

Or because we're at late stage capitalism and the massive consolidation of corporations is quickly turning the world into a corporatocracy. Something must be done to prevent this dystopia. Democratic socialism is one pitched solution. Do you have a better one or are you just going to repeat the "lulz socialism always fails" meme?

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[–] irelandLost ago 

That's not a meme, it's a historical fact that socialism always fails. And we're not at "late stage capitalism" whatever that nonsense is supposed to mean, we've just let the crony aspect of crony capitalism gain too much influence over economies. Solutions are relatively simple: smaller state leading to less unnessecary regulations (the most powerful feather in the bow of the corporatists is overegulation), proper enforcement of anti-trust laws in industries that become controlled by monopolies or oligarchies, similar with cartel behaviours. Stop globalised firms and companies becoming "stateless" through WTO or sanctions on those that facilitate this practice (my country would be head of the queue here, we facilitate some serious tax avoidance by corporates). And the one socialist aspect that needs to return is trade unions, or something similar for the modern day. The labour movements in Europe got annihilated in the 80s and 90s and the results have been very far reaching. It is why politics has become the preserve of the extraordinarily wealthy, and it has resulted in a persistent attack on labour's standards of living.

Capitalism will always be the best economic system, but that doesn't mean our systems can't be manipulated by those with influence. Bailing out the banks, wildly increasing the money supply etc. were not capitalist practices, they were cronyism. Don't confuse the cronyism of capitalism with capitalism itself.

Add to all of the above the financial system is a joke, and has been since 1971. Again, this is not a fault of capitalism.

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[–] Mylon ago 

Capitalism regularly faces a crisis every 80 years or so. Ever heard of generational theory? It's foundation is in capitalism. Our bounty leads to a boom in population, the competition for jobs (not resources, but jobs) drives down wages until the best minimum wage job available is soldier, and thus hard times. The combine harvester caused this on a massive scale and this resulted in World War 1. But war changed and it didn't kill nearly as many people as wars of antiquity (The Spansih Flu of 1918 was deadlire than WW1!), which played a large part in the sequel occuring soon after.

Post World War 2 was a huge transformation because most of the world transitioned towards socialism. Including the United States. Socialism already has proven to be an effective panacea to the ails of capitalism and that's why people are calling for more socialism today.