Why do some people defend the billionaires and capitalism?

Many people do not grasp the sheer size of the disparity between the truly wealthy and everyone else.

I assume they think they will be able to achieve the same status in the game that's designed to literally oppress them and make them think they are cared by the billionaires.

because they prefer to dream of themselves as billionaires in potentia. it's hard to admit you've been duped, especially when society gives you so many targets to punch down on.

or, as futurama put it, link

Well it's similar to what Churchill said about democracy... it's a bad system but it's better than all the others.

If you can put ideology aside and think in terms of economics, in many industries capitalism offers an efficient way of determining the an optimal price and quantity to produce considering the costs and value something brings. And it's something that allows for industries to function without an excessive amount of centralized planning which will often get things wrong.

But it's like a machine in a many ways. And like any machine it requires maintenance. Things like trust-busting, progessive taxation, regulations, and occasional stimulus are necessary to keep it running smoothly.

But once you bring ideology into it, it all becomes a shitshow. Some will argue capitalism is a perfect machine and any kind of maintenance on the machine will ruin it's perfection. Others take any kind of maintenance on the machine as a sign the machine will inevitably fail and needs to be replaced entirely. But then we go back to the beginning where other systems have been tried and they're worse. Charlatans, grifters, ideologues abound pushing people in every direct except for simply taking reasonable measures to keep the machine running smoothly. There's an almost religious devotion towards arguing the either the machine is perfect or the machine is doomed to failure and not only should be replaced they should accelerate the failure so it can be replaced sooner.

Zealots from all sides demonize the mechanics that are simply keeping things running. A lot of emotional nonsense about this thing. But to an economist, it's just a machine with both strengths and weaknesses. The functioning of the machine is well understood, and the other machines that have been tried didn't really work.

Many reasons. One major factor imho is the belief or illusion to be living in a meritocracy. Which would mean, that someone who's rich has to have earned it and therefore criticism must stem from envy or jealousy. The same belief fuels the ideology of thinking of poor people to just be lazy leeches on society.

Many don't even do it intentionally, they just don't grasp concepts like Historical and Dialectical Materialism, which requires reading lengthy books to fully grasp. They may be anti-Capitalist at heart, but without a solid understanding of theory they play into bourgeois hands.

There's also the fact that the ideas held by society are a reflection of the Mode of Production.

Because propaganda is effective.

temporarily embarrassed billionaires

Richard Nixon's head : I promise to cut taxes for the rich and use the poor as a cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel!

[audience applauds]

Philip J. Fry : That'll show those poor!

Turanga Leela : You're not rich!

Philip J. Fry : But someday I might be rich, and people like me better watch their step

People who defend billionaires either have a vested interest, have actually bought that they're 1000x smarter than normal people, or have some (possibly vague) abstract moral position that overrules the basic idea of fairness. Often it's more than one.

Capitalism, as the term is commonly used, is poorly defined enough that you have to specify what it means here. Is it any kind of market? Is it large corporations? Is it every interaction being purely voluntary (somehow)? If you consider a big Soviet firm like Gosbank a "corporation", all three could also be socialist depending on who you ask.

Since this is .ml, for the classical Marxist definition that it's "private ownership of the means of production", the arguments are mainly against the proposed alternatives, or just that private vs. personal is hard to demarcate, and nobody wants to share a toothbrush.

I guess the central premise of capitalism is that while every society has its haves and have nots, capitalism is supposed to encourage the haves to invest in the economy rather than hoarding their wealth. In return, they stand to get even wealthier, but a stronger economy ought to generate more employment and generally improve the lives of commoners as well.

Unfortunately, in a never-ending quest to make wealth-generation more efficient and streamlined, employment is being eliminated through automation, outsourcing, etc. and the system is eating itself out from the inside. I doubt it can persist much longer, but what will replace it remains unclear. I pray that it will be something sensible that ensures everyone has their basic needs met and can still find rewarding pursuits in life. But there are so many ways it could go very wrong, and that includes staying on the current course.

Propaganda

Unfortunately many of us have been taught that being a good person and a good citizen equals being productive and accumulating resources. Things that are quantifiable and external to the actual person and their relationships.

Being productive and accumulating some resources can be good activities to spend time on, but they are practical necessities and not defining characteristics of existence.

1. Because it's in their personal interests to perpetuate capitalism
2. Because liberal ideology is hegemonic and it is what most people have been raised to believe
3. Plenty of other reasons why people hold the political beliefs they hold, surely it's obvious that there are many ways that someone can arrive at a belief system

Our retirement is tied to it.

Because the average person doesn't have any real time to think deeply about politics. They believe whatever big media tells them. Some also can't understand how evil someone people can get.

"Surely the basic logic of how things work must be very consistent in order to have such a large and prosperous country like the USA. I don't understand it. Probably because I'm missing something not because it's fundamentally flawed"

Liberalism, its propaganda, and its consequences. Also a severe lack of class consciousness and knowledge of political theory.

The Post apocalyptic nature of alot of media makes me think that people can more easily Imagine the fall of human civilization then we can a better world where everyone's needs are met.

To the 1%, losing all your wealth and power be an apocalypse, so it is in their best interests that everyone would be thinking the same as well. No matter how much better we all would be together otherwise.

We’re raised by parents that must be obeyed for our own safety. Some people eventually learn to accept their parents are imperfect people and not gods. Many people do not. They look to kings and gods to protect and provide for them.

Those that have power negotiate with kings and gods. People without power attempt to use the only techniques they know to negotiate with their kings and gods: begging and/or pledging loyalty and service in exchange for scraps.

Of course this is but one of many reasons many people worship power.

It's not because they think they can be billionaires, it's because they've been taught (and in a minority of cases this is true) that they are better off going after the crumbs that billionaires leave them than trying some other system.

Ignorance, pride, "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" syndrome.

About defending capitalism (and not billionaires - who more often than not abuse this system). Some of us lived in other systems. And we understand any other system is way way way way worse.

There are however a lot of problems with capitalism and should be held on a very short leash. Or else monopoly happens. The most effective actions to keep capitalism at bay: strong anti-trust laws, strong worker protection (this includes a lot of stuff), wealth tax.

And be aware there are many flavours of calitalism. Most commonly people in USA are the most extreme where you have really "long leash". And people see such capitalism as failing and want to replace whole system.

Because my country, Ukraine, was under communists and it was not good time with all genocides, holodomor, repressions, red terrors and other things. Because good life under communists had only people from nomenclature. And I didn't say nothing about censorship. Under censorship you'll not create good music, good meals, good products, good communities. All things will be under control of old guys from communist party

For the same reason people idolize the King.

I think the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" idea is overstated, most people I interact with have a somewhat negative outlook on the economy and their future wealth.

I think the real issue is that no viable alternative is presented to most people.

The alternatives presented are Russian-style authoritarian oligarchy, Islamofascism, or a Venezuela-style "socialism" in which the narrative only focuses on poverty.

They feel they will make that money someday.

They believe that the status quo is better than any alternatives. They have not been exposed to other ways of living and those that have lock themselves to basic tribalistic thinking.

Imagine trying to get a sports fan to see the benefits of being a fan of another sports team. Even if they aren’t personally playing and their team isn’t winning they maintain loyalty. Some even bet on their loser teams and lose money just because of loyalty.

It’s all about team loyalty/ tribalism

They sold a lottery ticket to the population and made it look like 99% of you can win when the odds are rigged like a gambling machine. Everybody would defend a gambling machine as “fair and balanced” with enough indoctrination. “The American Dream” was when everybody could afford everything on minimum wage but capitalism is a short term oriented goal where for profit is the only actual mission. Tell me how many people can be sacrificed for it and I would say everybody as climate change has proven and a trillion dollar industry has shown. These climate change activists are stupid enough to think they can take down big corporations with wallets older than some of them. Never in a million years as long as capitalism exists. Imagine 112 years of sitting on their asses and not until 10-20 years ago they decided to use tweezers to put some pressure on them. Now that the whole world is about to be changed completely and irreversibly they want to stop it. It’s basically a cancerous economy that only festers at the top of the economy sucking everything around it until theirs nothing left but the cancer.

This might be relevant:

https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=-fl7rLryYZBDVgTN&t=194

Conditions here were deplorable by any objective measure. And if you'll recall, one of the hallmarks of early Russian industrialization was: the workforce was often transient. People moved back and forth between their home villages and jobs in the cities, and this flux meant that the places people lived and where they ate and bathed and got medical attention were only ever temporary expedients. It was a bit like you were going off to some particularly crappy summer camp. It was only meant to be temporarily endured, not lived in full time, and so conditions just never got better. People were not just renting rooms; they were renting corners of rooms. You could rent not just a bed, but part of a bed. Sanitation was, of course, practically non-existent, and the food was disgusting. The work itself, meanwhile, was long and grueling. There were no safety standards in the factories. There were hardly any rights for anybody at all. And pay was literally inadequate. The ministry of finance itself surveyed conditions and concluded that a family of four needed about fifty rubles a month to purchase basic necessities (that is, food and shelter and heat) and then they found that 75% of the workers were making less than 30 rubles a month. The economic and moral math was just not adding up.

https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=FtaiY47HVyXXBeAP&t=340

The lower skilled, less educated, and still mentally "peasant" workers tended to remain culturally conservative. They were orthodox christian and believed strongly in the divine benevolence of the czar. And indeed one of the things reported by both social democrats and SRs back to their respective central committees was that they struggled to recruit among these workers because they were out there pitching "overthrowing the czar" and everyone was like "What? We... we love the czar, and he loves us too!"

To them, the czar was not a villain, but a hero. Not the devil, but their savior. It understandably made recruiting for a political revolution to overthrow their "hero and savior" very difficult.

https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2020/02/1033-bloody-sunday.html

I think it's like the old trope of asking a fish how the water is and they reply "what's water?"

because they arent the ones being stripped of their livelihoods to fatten the moneypigs

I think you know why. Is this a real question or are you just fishing?

Brainwashed since birth. GI Joe had the American Express slogan in an episode ("never leave home without it."). Alvin and the Chipmunks had a story about the Berlin Wall propagandizing communism. All the bad guys in Cobra have accents.

This shit is vile and it was on my morning cartoons.

Lack of successful alternatives? It's easy to find flaws with capitalism but every other system has its share of problems too.

Stockholm syndrome

Living in denial is easy to continue doing and widely encouraged, while being very hard to overcome.

what if it was me

Often because they're profiting from it themselves.

They don't have to balls to think for themselves.

Interesting question. I don't think I've ever defended either. I've also only lived in capitalist countries, so I have no personal experience with other economic systems.

ITT: A lot of people answering for people who have diametrically opposed views to them.

Because communism ≠ utopia. I only hate on shitty billionaires and ones that used shady methods to amass their wealth.

Brainwashing.

Some people think they are part of the club, rest don't know better

I defend capitalism because it is the most equitable and productive economic system that has ever existed, lifting more people out of poverty than ever before.

Free markets create space for those who don’t fit in. As an autistic person, I appreciate a world where I can find a way to survive other than convincing a committee that I deserve to exist.

I don’t deserve billionaires per se, but I have nothing against their existence and I think that a billionaire under capitalism is more fair and more likely to have fairly and productively achieved their wealth than a billionaire under any other system.

And if you don’t think the other systems have billionaires, you’re blind.

Under a free market, one gets rich by providing value. Economic relations are mutually consensual. That’s the definition.

What is called “capitalism” these days is, generally speaking, the places where the free market has broken down. Slaves aren’t a free market scenario. Only having one available job isn’t a free market scenario. Big corporations controlling the government to prevent their competition from surviving or arising isn’t a free market scenario.

All the “worst aspects of capitalism” that people complain about are exactly the aspects of the world that most resemble capitalism’s alternatives like anarchy and centralized command economies.

We need more free market, not less. We need to let people buy a pack of cigarettes and then sell them for $2 a pop to make a profit, not kill them for doing this.

The anti-capitalist hate is the result of decades of anti-working class propaganda that has made generations of people dedicated to destroying the very thing that gives them hope and possibility in the world.

Biggest psy op in history, as Marx himself would be the first to recognize if he were alive and commenting today. I defend capitalism NOT because I want to fit in, but because it is the right thing to do.

The simple fact is that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty historically than anything else.

Is capitalism a perfect system? Of course it isn't. But it's the best one we've got.

Regulation is stripping freedom from people. We want freedom, we can’t regulate people.

I think that’s an argument.

Billionaires and capitalism isn't the same problem. We have billionaires because anti-monopoly committee isn't working :) that's a main reason why they're existing :)

because the idea of being super rich is awesome and i want to be super rich. so much bills i wouldnt have a thought about 😂

Regarding capitalism, in reality, it is the best system we’ve seen so far.

Yes, theoretically other systems could be better for the general public. But in reality, they never have been.

Lack of good examples of countries that are successful without being capitalist?

Pretty ubiquitously non-capitalist countries have a pretty poor track record.

I often hear the phrase, capitalism is terrible, but it's the least bad of the terrible options.

As an aside, I'm arguing here for capitalism, not billionaires. Supporting capitalism isn't an endorsement of a complete lack of controls and safeguards.

Implied in your question is the notion that a billionaire or corporation can never be right about a given topic. That just isn’t true.

Also, on any given topic people will have differing opinions for different reasons. Having an opinion that happens to align with a billionaire or corporation isn’t the same as defending those entities. Often you’re stuck siding with one of those entities no matter what side of an issue you fall on.

I like Mark Cuban’s efforts to lower prescription costs. Does that mean I’m siding with a billionaire? If you don’t agree with me should I be able to dismiss your opinion as support for the pharmaceutical industry?

Life isn’t black and white. Opinions can be nuanced and complex. I rarely see any comments defending companies for the pure love of capitalism. Reducing people’s opinions to an easy-to-villainize stance is just that – reductive. It doesn’t aid in meaningful conversation.

Because it's easier than defending socialism or communism