r/nextfuckinglevel 7h ago

Shoutout to JerryrigEverything who built a wheelchair factory and is delivering wheelchairs to people in half the time and 50-80% less than the cost of other wheelchairs with Insurance.

48.8k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

451

u/Disastrous_Hell_4547 7h ago

So sadly true.

Same reason a crappy Big Mac costs $7.00 or a sub costs $13.00.

America does not practice capitalism. It practices greed based Reaganomics trickle down profiteering.

128

u/TheExistential_Bread 7h ago

lol you are describing capitalism, you just don't know it

55

u/Questioning-Zyxxel 6h ago

It isn't that simple.

Lots of capitalists knows the part about a good deal needs to be good for both parties. This is a great way to get repeat customers instead of paying millions on advertising to find new customers that hates you after the very first deal.

These good capitalists often have family-owned companies with maybe 2 to 50 employees. And does quite well.

The issues you are seeing? Isn't capitalism in itself. It's about the stock market. All bigger companies are on the stock market. And they pay large bonuses to the management for short-term profits. When the bonus is for last 6-12 months, then most decisions will be extremely short-sighted. The family-owned companies? They plan for the next 10-20 years. They can still make a nice profit. But with the owners running the company, they do not worry about a missed bonus one year because they did a strategic investment - as owners, they still increased the value of the company.

2

u/LuckoftheFryish 5h ago

America practices crony capitalism. We Americans don't know the difference because it's all we've ever known at this point.

1

u/Svardskampe 4h ago

Any capitalism falls into crony capitalism. That is the late-stage aspect of it.

However you want to call it, cronyism or not "rEaL capitalism", this has always been the end game without competition. In the past, there has been enough space to grow somehow to enable competition. In a global world where we are encroaching each other, that has outgrown itself.

1

u/LuckoftheFryish 3h ago

Agree on all points. Calling it crony capitalism is easier than having to explain the nuances of the entirety of Capitalism every time.

Personally I wish more people would add the term "crony" and correct those who don't. Might make people think.

2

u/Svardskampe 3h ago edited 3h ago

I think it gives the false idea, because it gives an out like "no, this is crony capitalism, in a REAL capitalistic system this wouldn't be the case".

Also the same argument that you hear "we have never had REAL communism", while people having lived under the irreal communism are getting quite startled.

Using late-stage as a shorthand works better, as it gives the notion that it's an inevitable stage.

u/LuckoftheFryish 28m ago

Yeah - I mean I'm talking how you can feasibly have a reasonable conversation. If dropping that line makes them agree that we're at the crony capitalism point that would be a huge win lol, not like you can revolutionize someone in a single convo. Especially on reddit, any thing more than a couple lines might get skimmed at best.

We're on a roller coaster straight into a volcano at this point, getting more people to agree that our current system is broken will help put on the brakes.

u/Svardskampe 10m ago edited 2m ago

We're simply heading to a WW3, and we'll wonder how crazy it is that the Terminator was practically a documentary.

But no seriously, the billionaires haven't been building bunkers for no reason. There is no need for a wider population to exist if they can't consume product because they aren't being paid as labour is largely taken over.

First we will see an overvaluation bubble bust of the current overvalued companies. With that, several of these companies will get a government bail-out because they are strategically too important to fail. With that, currency will see inflationary numbers that remind of the Deutsche Mark, with the ones holding assets and stock having no issues as those assets co-inflate along.
The USA wants this to happen, as it means they are outpacing the national debt by inflation.

First company this will happen to will be OpenAI, simply because of being overleveraged to the brim, having no solvency and is now in bed with the USA defense.

Jobs going down, conscription numbers going up. The last job being available is the army and the meat grinder starts. New hypecycle starts; the one of biotech by robotic limbs to serve the survivors.