Capitalism is nothing but a giant pyramid scheme.

Trickle up economics

It's hardly a trickle either.
I caught myself mid laugh before realizing the reality of that statement.
More like a firehose

I'd say it's more like disguised feudalism. We're all peasants for the few kings and queens that have all the money at the top.

I don't think people actually agree on the definition of capitalism itself, I just looked it up and was a little surprised how definitive it is:
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
If you asked whether capitalism is a political system, at least in my random polling, 2 out of 9 respondents said No.

Now it’s the owners of the holding companies who own the owners of all the rest doing the controlling.
- Capitalism is now playing 3D chess

Honestly one of the reasons I fell for a pyramid scheme coming out of high school.

A friend invited me and I went to shit on it and get him out, but the main guy's whole thing was "everything is a pyramid scheme, at least here you have the chance to build a pyramid beneath you."

Obviously there were other reasons as old as time, but the argument of "so what, your 'regular job' is already a pyramid scheme you can't win" was pretty rattling to a teenager in 2011.

The difference between a pyramid scheme and a good business is where your money comes from, in a pyramid scheme it comes from the people at the bottom of the pyramid, in a business it comes from selling goods and/or services, that's not saying I agree with big business, but one is profiting off of legitimate customers, the other is profiting off it's own "employees". I nearly got caught into one a few years ago too, until I realized what it was, at that point they had only taken a couple $100 for the interview and sign up stage, i had to block my card for them to never get access again, because even though i didnt complete sign up, thwy kept charging me monthly
- What about the stock market? They seem to be pricing companies way higher than they are worth.

It fundamentally is NOT a pyramid scheme. In a pyramid scheme there is no actual product or service of value and simply extracts wealth from the people in lower tiers. Value, or wealth, is simply the byproduct of an equitable transaction between two or more parties.

Transactions are often not equitable, and most wealth bubbles up to the people on the top tiers.
- Markets are not always fair or efficient but that doesn't mean capitalism is a pyramid scheme. It is still very much the opposite.
Except that you're describing commerce, not capitalism. Capitalism is the idea that the commerce has value, and that one can own the value of the commercial activity. Further, the value of the business is tied to it's growth.
Further, products and services are never exchanged in an equitable transaction between two parties, because capitalism necessitates a third party, the capitalist. The capitalist must acquire products and services from employees for less than their true value, and then sell them to consumers for more than their true value.
And because capitalism demands growth, one or both of those two margins must continue to expand. This means workers must be pressured to work for less and less, which is why the capitalist opposes social services, universal healthcare, and affordable housing. This also means the capitalism opposes consumer protections, environmental protections, and taxes that provide a functioning society that might interfere with their growth.
Now what happens when every producer and consumer is fighting for the same margins, the same advantages, and the same growth? Then the capitalist seeks new avenues for new capital and new capitalists. Building business on ensuring the growth of business for other capitalists. Selling the idea that you, too, can join us at the top of the pyramid, all the while kicking down ladders they climbed to get there.
So no, the system itself isn't a pyramid scheme. It's just an idea that encourages pyramid schemes because it relies on impossible growth, like a cancer eating away at society.
- No, fractional reserve banking demands endless growth because debts can't be paid off with interest since the extra money to pay the interest didn't initially exist. Therefore, banks have to lend out more money they don't have so the prior debts can be paid off but in the process they create more debt. This leads to the insatiable need for more growth in the economy.
- This is a bot isn't it?

To be more specific, fractional-reserve banking system creates this giant pyramid scheme, not capitalism per se.

Please explain, how exactly is fractional-reserve banking a pyramid scheme?
- Because it allows banks to lend out money they don't have and when the banks lobby hard enough to completely remove whats left of the gold standard, the sky's the limit for lending out money. Creating money out of thin air increases inflation. However, in a weird way it impoverishes the lower classes while inriching the elite class because the latter tends to better connected and therefor closer to the "monetary spigot". This allows the elite class to buy up everything(land, companies, lobby/bribe governments)from the top down like a game of pacman.
- That's a valid point, though I still wouldn't call it a pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes don't have to be zero-sum. All you need are assholes at the top trying to suck up as many resources as they can. Imagine the shape that makes.
If we take into consideration the destruction of the ecosystems necessary to sustain human life, capitalism is a net-negative.
- They draw the box around the part that is a net positive.
  The destruction of the Commons is not accounted for.
  The impacts outside their box are not accounted for.
- Before Capitalism Humanity drove mammoths into exctintion, and that was a hunter-gatherer society.
  https://www.earth.com/news/humans-drove-woolly-mammoths-to-extinction/
  What I mean with this is that the effect of humanity in the environment is an human issue independent to the economic system issue the humans use.
- That’s the tragedy of the commons, and you’ll find it’s true for basically every possible societal organization.
I think you can say is a pyramid scheme in the way you can't really make money if you aren't making money for someone upper on the ladder, even if are an independent business owner, you still have loans to pay or equipment that is sold by a corporation.
- Generally the idea is that both parties need to benefit from any transaction if it is voluntary.

If anything this understates the problem.

True, because it's also a giant Ponzi scheme. We pick up new debt today to pay off debt from yesterday, and we hope expanding GDP and inflation will always offset the difference.
- Is there a difference between a pyramid and a ponzi scheme?
- You're not forced to take on that debt though, nor is the debt unpayable unless you take on more debt. Some people put themselves into a ponzi-like situation either through poor financial decision making or circumstances so shit that they can't do any better, but the average person doesn't need to take out a loan on a freaking pair of nikes or even a car or house. It's a cultural norm to get a mortgage, but if you do the math it often doesn't make sense to and isn't anywhere close to mandatory. At most you could argue that the US government debt works that way, but even that's iffy and depends on your geopolitical outlook.

DAE Capitalism bad?

omg me
Yes!
I've seen several thought experiments about capitalism, and letting it run to its extreme conclusion.
Attempt one, with the theoretical best starting conditions, devolved into feudalism
Attempt two, which assumed people knew how attempt one ended up and where they wanted to do everything they could to prevent that from happening again, concluded towards theocracy, since capitalism ignores religion, which can become a coercive power structure, separate from capitalism or government.
Attempt three, where everyone knew how the previous two experiments went, did away with money, and replaced it with an economy based on service contracts, evolved into communism.
- Sounds like interesting reading, could you please add a link or reference?
Literally as soon as a society calls itself communist or socialist it turns into a perfect utopia
- It can call itself whatever it likes, doesn't mean it actually is that thing.

I would say this about the stock market

would you sign up to my pyramid scheme if I was a cat?? 🥺

This is the ideal shower thought imo. Concise, absolutely true, and something you wouldn't realize on a daily basis (at least not in these terms)

Yes, but you're going to find the same thing with Communism.

Too many shitty greedy people at the top, too many plebs with fuck all at the bottom.

And while you may be thinking "I could live on a commune, spend an hour a day growing our own food and have all that time left for whatever else I want", you'll quickly find you can't grow your own 65" OLED television or whatever other comforts you've become accustomed to.

The billionaires need reining in, and better distribution of wealth all around the bottom, but capitalism ain't going anywhere.

Communism isn’t the same as a tech-less agrarian society
You don't need a 65" OLED TV because you know it's bad for the environment.
- So are PCs and smartphones, yet here you are.

and with a disappointing lack of giant pyramids, no less!

Capitalism is anarchism for shitty people.

Anarchism is capitalism for based people!

To all the people here ranting about monetary debt: its not an issue. Money isn't designed to hold value in the long term. It's a feature, not a bug.

It's just really unfortunate for those who play the game as if money were an asset. It's meant for transactions, not for storage.

Reminds me of that famous Churchill quote about democracy

Oh I know that one!
I’d say something about democracy, if only I had the internet to look up what I said.
— Winston Churchill

Maybe we have different ideas of "works"

I'm very curious about where that response even came from
- I was also thinking that but now i see his comment as a reply to aome other comment so he probably have sent this by accident

How so though? This sounds like a statement that's meant to be flashy but doesn't actually hold up. Pyramid schemes are characterized by a) an eventual lack of ability to recruit more people, b) recruitment rather than a product or a service being the driver, and c) a person at the bottom left with nothing, including recourse. Capitalism, even completely free capitalism, doesn't work like that unless you specifically rig it to do so. That's called "corruption".

Like half the population of the world are poor, every industry is using behind the doors sweatshops. Essentially slavery. While not a perfect synonym, I think it makes sense
an eventual lack of ability to recruit more people
Global population growth is slowing and predicted to halt within the next few decades.
The modern economy has always relied on an environment of growth, which will now end. In some ways this resembles a pyramid scheme; in the past anyone making investments in the economy could count on a larger new generation of people coming into the market needing to exchange their labor for those hoarded resources. Since this is no longer going to be the case, new entrants to the market are going to be getting a lot less for their effort than they may have expected based on past trends.

Some retirement saving schemes may be a pyramid scheme. When the population growth stagnates, there will not be enough young people to produce for everyone.

actually all economies are zero sum game. down the drain everything is about ressources rather than labour or energy. the later are the means to transforming the resources. what counts at the end is how much you have to survive and thrive.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong. Whenever two people engage in a transaction and walk away happy, value has been created. A zero sum game would be if the economy were a pie of static shape, where if you have more then I have less. But it isn't like that. The pie grows, and every time there is an equitable transaction with value being created, the pie gets bigger and everyone is better off. That's the opposite of a zero sum game.
- The Pie is of static shape, and that shape is all the resource planet is holding, and any part party who has more of those ressources means others will have less, the economy 'wealth" of the british empire didn't grow because it has engaged in equitable transaction with the colonised world (you can never have equitable __ insert something here __ ), they needed more ressources to grow and those ressources were extracted elsewhere
  Just the same how the rich countries today aren't rich because they engage in equitable transactions with the poor world, but because the mecanisme that are put in place makes so those "equitable transactions" favours the hoarding of wealth on one side more than the other.

That's crony capitalism.

Capitalism is a scheme where finite raw materials are being extracted and where finite nature is being destroyed - both on the planetary scale; once we reach the end, it will be the end.

in that there are hierarchical meritocratic levels of achievement?

or that there are extractive processes which benefit the top at the expense of those lower?

At this point, "Capitalism" feels as undefined to the left as "Woke" is to the right. It may be bad, but people just put whatever they don't like into a box and call it "Capitalism".

Yeah, no, the left has always had a pretty consistent analysis of capitalism. It comes to different solutions to it, but we all pretty much agree why capitalism is bad.
- Yea, I even agree on the analysis that it is bad. The trick is defining WHAT it is.

Capitalism is nothing but allowing freedom and allowing property (in contrast to posession)