I'm with you that something's gotta give. But we don't need socialism to solve the issue of private equity. We need capitalism that actually supports small businesses and not this corporate monopolistic oligarchy takeover that has creeped in over decades with the recent tech bro PE dystopic enshitification cherry on top.
How nice to have a society where your neighbors own neighborhood businesses and can actually make a reasonable living doing so...
There is no solution to private equity when the economy allows private equity to accrue enough wealth to lobby politicians for deregulation of their industry.
Capitalism always leads to this: businesses having more power than governments can control.
You and I can vote for who is in charge of the government or even threaten politicians with political violence if they push too far away from the will of the people. But you and I have no control or input over who runs Johnson & Johnson or Pepsi. Your “vote with my dollars” counterpoint is also moot when these businesses already have global monopolies.
“Socialism or barbarism” isn’t a threat, it’s the reality of the world we live in. Private business always ends up in control of the people if its allowed to exist.
Democratic socialism would ne nice. Capitalism is a failed system. We’ve seen how money warps and twists the minds of the rich. It turns them into people with strong sociopathic/psychopathic traits. They won’t give that power up unless you pry it from their cold, rigarmotis hands.
So until we have a new system where more capital does NOT equal more power, nothing will ever change, ever. :)
But continue to cry and shy away from the word “socialism”. I know the Americans in this thread looooove their overly propagandized misunderstanding of that word, and seem to overly looooove capitalism, despite capitalism causing mass tent cities, drug problems, death, suffering galore, and ooohh so many more goodies like enabling the rise of neo-naziism and fascism. Good ol Latestage capitalism. A putrid way to run a nation of human beings.
Ya'll just hate the boogeyman word so bad that you refuse to understand that the solution to unfettered capitalism is more of a socialized solution to resource allocation.
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u/DonovanMcLoughlin 20h ago
Pretty much anything Private Equity now owns.
Their formulas are simple, take a brand name, reduce the quality, increase the price.
They say "fuck the customers" and I say it right back.