Asklemmy

43978 readers

587 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

377

Why is everything going to shit? (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

123 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Was just trying to explain to someone why everything is going to shit, specifically companies, and realized, I don't fully get it either.

I've got the following explanation. The sentences marked with "???" are were I'm lost. Anyone mind telling me, if they're correct and if so, why?

The past few years, central banks were giving out interest rates of 0% or even negative percentages. Regular banks would not quite pass this on, but you could still loan money and give it back later with no real interest payments.

This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn't have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???

This has stopped being the case, as central banks are hiking interest rates again, to combat inflation???

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is that money is permited to generate money. So the more you have beyond the threshold to sustain yourself the more you can generate without labour. The business with no interest loans accelerates things but it isn't the problem. It is that the system rewards idle investors at the expense of those whose labour actually generates value.

Capitalism wasn't fine until someone broke it. The core concepts behind it are flawed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've said this plenty of times but it bears repeating, the problem isn't capitalism or the type of social structure, the problem is people. Capitalism is a simplistic and ultimately ineffective solution, because it doesn't account for the human problem.

People will always try to game the system. We need a system that recognises and accounts for that.