I don’t think it’s ‘efficiency’ in the same way spaceX is run. Yeah they cut costs, but they got better quality results.
With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doing it make more money than ever.
This is what happened to Dr. Martens (footwear)
to Instant pot (cookware)
to Red Lobster (restaurants)
Endorsed by legislative policy, e.g. tax-deductible interest payments on PE-induced debt.
Jeez. I can see it. Omg.
The difference between cheap rocket launches and cheap clothes in those terms is just where this sweet spot is: there may not be a high demand at all for more failure prone rocket launches, while poorly constructed clothes and appliances have evidently come to seem perfectly acceptable to a lot of consumers.
I challenge that assumption. If whole markets are dominated by companies who have downgraded quality to the minimum, then customers have no choice but to keep buying from you or someone else doing the same thing. If they don’t buy from you because of their most recent bad experience, someone else (who bought their jeans that ripped in a month from someone else) will. The only alternatives would be to make your own clothes or to seek out very specific high-quality artisanal sources. Both options are out of the reach of at least 75% of the market.
A market without perfect information and where consumption isn't necessarily driven by rational needs is ripe for exploitation. Why should a business create higher quality clothes if they can instead manipulate consumers into thinking they're losers for not replacing their wardrobes every year, flood the market with thousands of labels to create brand uncertainty and pay people to "review" them favorably to further make it hard to be an informed consumre? They can can condition consumers into believing that poor quality is acceptable, so why shouldn't they if it ultimately results in higher profits?
It’s interesting when you think of clothes vs appliances though. I don’t think anyone wants to replace their washer every 5 years for fashion, but it’s nearly required. You’re right with clothes though, fashion is geared to promote discarding. I wonder though, wasn’t fashion also a thing in the 1940s? Yet then, clothes still lasted longer.
I'm talking about "perfect information" in the ideal, economic sense: in this case knowledge of every piece of information that could affect a consumption choice. With perfect information you would of course know which brands gave the best value for the money. All brands would necessarily compete by being the brand that gave the most value for the money for different segments of consumers with different ideas of what exactly "the most value" entails. A company that could produce equivalent goods and sell at lower prices would leave competitors in the dust, because you would know about it and have no reason to consider other options.
Of course, the $100 dress that lasts for 10 years might still be less valuable than a $9 dress of similar appearance that lasts for one year in those terms, depending on how much of a cost there is to making the purchase in itself and disposing of the broken dresses.
> I wonder though, wasn’t fashion also a thing in the 1940s? Yet then, clothes still lasted longer.
There certainly was a fashion industry and an awareness of ongoing trends, but I don't think the pace of dissemination and proliferation of new trends was nearly as high then as it is now. I don't know, but I'm betting that the pace picked up when television became a commonplace household item and then again with the advent of social media.
I also don't think they could have produced a $9 1/10 durability alternative to the $100 dress. The difference in production cost between shoddy products and high quality products may have been smaller with the state of the art of the 1940s in terms of production chains, alternative materials, labor, time.
Why do middle class people spend $1000 on a phone that's, for every single purpose they use it for, basically identical to a phone that would cost a fraction as much? Why do low class urban people buy sneakers for hundreds of dollars that, again, for every single purpose they use them for - are essentially identical to some no brand sneakers that would cost a tenth as much? Somehow, at some point, being overtly ripped off became a way of signaling 'class', which is just about the most idiotic thing imaginable. In 'better times' people would look at somebody with a $1000 phone or $300 sneakers as a gullible idiot, and that seems correct to me.
The way people spend money creates a major incentive for companies to rip them off. Our economic system isn't forcing people to behave this way, although mass advertising is probably playing a huge role in maintaining it.
I just made the mistake of buying cheapo flipflops a few weeks ago. One stroll through the park and they are full of gravel stuck in the sole that left holes when I removed it. A few a days I replaced them with 7x as expensive ones. Already walked around 10x as far distance, no sign of issues. A reminder that buying cheap ends up more expensive. I don't need crap in my life and maybe that holds too for the folks you are thinking of?
HN is full of computer nerds who can’t fanthom that computers are as mysterious to normies as sneakers are to the nerds of HN. A lot of people know how to tell apart good and bad footwear - it just isn’t you or your crowd!
Sneaker heads are all about the new nike x yeezy "mchitler edition" collab air joran X's
high end foot wear crowd will drop 700$ on aldens and almost 1000$ on a pair of boots from whites or nicks which will outlive you and your parents.
It's not the same crowd.
For a market to function properly people need to hone in on the great stuff for low prices quadrant, but that is, increasingly frequently, not what's happening. And it's not like some esoteric art - just check reviews. It's not too hard to ignore fake reviews.
You know this phrase originated in the 1930s or early 1940s, yes?
> With clothes / appliances etc we have reduced quality at our expense - while the companies doing it make more money than ever.
Specifically this is an issue of government failure and cultural malaise - food quality anyone? We need to vote better, and vote with our dollar better. Stop buying dumb DJI drones to race around and buy a nice sweater instead.
Interesting take. Any source ?
Government failure an cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight.
It doesn't, however, give any pointers on where to go from there.
Why does marketing and advertising exist then?
> Government failure and cultural malaise are what "late stage capitalism" predicts. It then predicts a collapse of the whole thing under its own weight.
If capitalism gives what the market demands, then you are suggesting that The People want government failure and malaise.
Either your premise is wrong or Late Stage Capitalism is wrong. Likely both.
Terms like Late Stage Capitalism are just there to give you something nice to hold on to and use as your scarecrow for anything bad you see in the world. An intellectual crutch, a helping hand into the graveyard. Car recall? Late Stage Capitalism! Forest fire? Climate change - late stage capitalism. Teeth fell out? Late Stage Capitalism. Covid-19 vaccines or a cure for cancer? Hmm somehow still Late Stage Capitalism.
And now you have your answer to why the world sucks and even better, Late Stage Capitalism says nothing about what comes next! No reason to do anything about it, like support the arts or educate a child, because it’s just Late Stage Capitalism after all.
Hopeless and failed ideologies (Communism/Socialism) love to generate destructive and useless distractions and slogans. Reject them!
> If capitalism gives what the market demands, then you are suggesting that The People want government failure and malaise
You are both correct here. Obviously people don't want malaise directly, but some directly seek government failure, and the rest vote for things that result in malaise and government failure, wittingly or otherwise. Often such voters do so because they think it will get them more money, which is a reasonable desire under capitalism.
> Hopeless and failed ideologies (Communism/Socialism)
Oh, I didn't realize till the end that you were treating this discussion as a team thing, and capitalism is "your team", so you must attack "the other team", even though nobody else mentioned it. Maybe instead of treating "the other team" as something nice to hold on to and use as your scarecrow for anything bad you see in the world, you can keep discussing the substance of things? You did a good job of this for a bit.
It’s just empirical. Both Communism and Socialism are failed ideologies. Millions dead. Millions more starved. It’s like when Libertarians want to bring about their ideology and people tell them to move to Sudan and experience it.
The term “Late Stage Capitalism” is a communist slogan. What’s insidious about it is that it tricks you into believing we can’t make things better or right wrongs, and that progress can’t be made. It has entered the American and Western social discourse as yet another instrument to sow distrust, fighting, and hatred. If/when I see the Right Wing Nazi equivalents of those slogans I call them out too.
I'm not interested in rehashing the team game of "capitalism vs communism vs whatever" for the millionth time here, and nobody but you brought up the latter, so you might safely conclude nobody else is, either.
Do you think you can take off your team hat and have a discussion about what we were talking about? Hint: it was capitalism (specifically late stage capitalism). Try responding on the topic without any distractions (like mentioning the other team as you might consider it).
After all, sports teams don't get better by pointing fingers at all the other teams, they get better by looking inward and finding what they should change. Here's an example:
> What’s insidious about [the term late-stage capitalism] is that it tricks you into believing we can’t make things better
The term absolutely doesn't do that, because it's 2 words, one meaning capitalism, the other meaning "a later stage of". You're free to suggest ways to motivate companies to stop enshitifying things for profit within the confines of late-stage capitalism, without resorting to one of your dreaded ideologies. But you'll have to actually do that. So let's look inward: how can we fix that?
Geez, seriously? The most successful societies in the world and human history have combined aspects of capitalism and socialism. A market based economy with social constructs that just provide better lives for people than pure capitalism would. Examples are not just the often-cited nordic countries. Germany, France, even the U.S. in its not-so-distant history have embraced that to great success. "Millions dead" is just as much populistic nonsense as the equally misguided doomsday scenarios painted by hardcore haters of capitalism.
105,000 people died by overdose in the USA in 2023. https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...
In 2023 the average daily incarceration population in the USA was 664,000. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/jail-inmates-2023-s...
Average daily homeless population for the USA in 2023 was 653,000. https://nlihc.org/resource/hud-releases-2023-annual-homeless...
In 2023 only 86% of US households were food secure. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
The majority of US bankruptcies (58.5%) “very much” or “somewhat” agreed that medical expenses contributed, and 44.3% cited illness-related work loss; 66.5% cited at least one of these two medical contributors—equivalent to about 530,000 medical bankruptcies annually. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6366487/
It doesn't look like the USA has a healthy ideology to me. It just spreads it out to 'death by 1000 cuts' and makes everyone's' suffering invisible.
FYI American police kill more people than any other country at 1100 people a year. Guess that's also 'democracy' and not, you know, just America:
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/
I don't care about criticisms about America. They're not interesting or relevant. Democracy and markets are superior to state owned means of production.
> Churchill's democracy in Britain has social housing and social healthcare.
Well it had those but in the case of housing it was primarily private (as it should be) and in the case of healthcare running a healthcare system is not Communism or Socialism any more than roads are.
"state owned is not communism or socialism"
Ok then.
" I'll take all this government mismanagement and markets over Communism and Socialism."
That's the great thing about Democracy. You can do things like found a socialist business model and have it compete in the market and you can respect the rights of others to not do so. If your model is better, or if it works well for you and like-minded folks, then all is well.
If they're just lazy bums siphoning away their fat paycheck, surely your method will be better and you will show the other workers a better way and you can all unite and create similar collective ownership models.
There are significant barriers to that, not least of which is access to capital.
But that's also not socialism, socialism is the economic system where that is true across the whole economy.
> That's the great thing about Democracy. You can do things like found a socialist business model and have it compete in the market and you can respect the rights of others to not do so.
Aside from misunderstanding aocialism as a business model and not an economic system, what you describe (where you are superficially free to do this but obstructed by structural barriers and a politico-economic system geared to favor a different model) has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with capitalism, an economic system that,because political and economic power are fungible and capitalism is centered around around concentrating the latter in a narrow class, is in constant tension with and undermines political democracy.
That's a barrier to start any business. Life is tough. I'm not sympathetic.
> But that's also not socialism, socialism is the economic system where that is true across the whole economy.
> Aside from misunderstanding aocialism as a business model and not an economic system, what you describe (where you are superficially free to do this but obstructed by structural barriers and a politico-economic system geared to favor a different model) has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with capitalism, an economic system that,because political and economic power are fungible and capitalism is centered around around concentrating the latter in a narrow class, is in constant tension with and undermines political democracy.
Just because it has various definitions and subcategories, can you just explain what Socialism means to you?
What I'm hearing is you want to abolish capitalism and replace it with workers (not the government) owning the means of production. Is that right/fair?
And then Communism we'd define as the government actually owning the means of production. Is that right/fair?
Its an additional barrier in a capitalist economy to starting an equal-ownership labor coop, because the people who do control capital prefer that businesses they fund be owned by the suppliers of capital.
> Life is tough.
And capitalism is organized around making it tougher for the vast majority so that it can be easier for an elite minority.
> I'm not sympathetic.
Clearly, though I’m not sure why you are so proud of that.
> Just because it has various definitions and subcategories, can you just explain what Socialism means to you?
Socialism means that the workers (which is equivalent to the people at large, since without private ownership of the means of production, the capitalist classes do not exist) owning the means of production and exercising control democratically. There are a large numbers of particular eays that this can be structured.
> What I'm hearing is you want to abolish capitalism and replace it with workers (not the government) owning the means of production. Is that right/fair?
The government is a means by which the workers can exercise some part of their control of the means of production, and in any practical socialist system a robustly democratic government will play some role (possibly not much more or much different in broad shape, outside of specifically rules on ownership of particular assets, than in the modern mixed economies that have replaced capitalism in the strict sense in most of the developed world since the mid-20th century, but also possibly significantly more in some areas.)
But I’m personally an incrementalist and not a radical revolutionary, so while “abolish capitalism” is in a sense technically correct, what I’d mostly prefer is continued incremental steps to reduce the structural favoritism granted to the capitalist class and to distribute increasing power to the working class (either directly as such or by democratically empowering the people without regard to class).
> And then Communism we'd define as the government actually owning the means of production. Is that right/fair?
“Communism” is a proposed utopian end state beyond socialism that some socialists (who are also known as “Communists” for this reason) believe is the ultimate goal, and also a name for the set of socialists who believe in one of the various schools of thought that have that as their end goal.
What you are describing as “Communism” is, ideally, state socialism, wherein the people at large control the means of production through robustly democratic state institutions. In practice, though, attempts to implement an economic system around it have actually ended up being, and mostly getting stuck in state capitalism [0], wherein a narrow and self-perpetuating elite controls both the state and, through the state, the means of production and society more generally.
The extent to which this is an inherent failure of state socialism versus a failure of the particular adaptations of Marxism made in Leninism to bypass (private) capitalism and the frequently associated development of democratic norms to attempt to implement state socialism in environments that are pre- or early-capitalist is a matter of some debate among the socialists outside of the schools that are willfully blind to the problem.
It is popularly associated with “Communism” because movements that have been successulf in taking control of regimes and which call themselves Communist have invariably been from Leninism or one of its derivatives which favor this model, but it isn't centrally what distinguished Communist schools of thought from other socialist ones, nor is it inherent in Communism at all; the relationship is incidental.
[0] there are some cases, like the PRC, that have “escaped” simple state capitalism for something more like fascist corporatism, but whether that's an improvement over being stuck in state capitalism is debatable. It is certainly better from the point of view of private capitalists, but...
How easy is it to start a business in America (or pick another capitalist economy like Denmark or the UK or Japan or something) versus any communist state that has existed?
We could compare over any given time period the number of businesses started in a capitalist country and compare that with Communist or Socialist states that have existed. To better drive the point home we could compare first-time business owners.
> Socialism means that the workers (which is equivalent to the people at large, since without private ownership of the means of production, the capitalist classes do not exist) owning the means of production and exercising control democratically. There are a large numbers of particular ways that this can be structured.
Ok but since you also live in a democracy you have to live with people like, say, me who prefer a different arrangement. Right?
Democracy and even capitalism allows you without any additional barriers to create the business ownership model that you want. Today, you and 50 people can start a new business and you can all share in the ownership of the means of production. You can grow that business and hire 50 more people and give them an equal share too. 100 people, 1% each.
In fact, we've seen co-ops, public benefit corporations, and other models come into existence and thrive!
> What you are describing as “Communism” is, ideally, state socialism, wherein the people at large control the means of production through robustly democratic state institutions. In practice, though, attempts to implement an economic system around it have actually ended up being, and mostly getting stuck in state capitalism [0], wherein a narrow and self-perpetuating elite controls both the state and, through the state, the means of production and society more generally.
Seems to me that it's possible that "getting stuck in state capitalism" is just the actual end result of the implementation of Communist ideology within the nation state framework. Empirically that's what we've seen so far, and Communists seem to recognize this too and they break down the existing nation state (regardless of form, monarchy or democracy), but people don't want to get rid of all of their stuff (airlines, nice watches, whiskey, you name it) and we just wind up with wars and millions dead.
And in the case of most of the Communist nations that have existed that has been what we have seen. You'd have to forgive one for reading a bit about history, and then looking around a country like Sweden or Australia and saying you know this capitalism and free markets thing isn't so bad. Sent from my iPhone
Its possibly (and my opinion is that this is likely the case) the unavoidable result of attempting to implement nearly pure state socialism.
There is no real reason to think that other approaches to socialism have this problem, and, again, “Communist” denotes a distinction within socialism that is orthogonal to the form of socialism sought but related to utopian end-goal past socialism, and there's even less reason to think that has any bearing on the outcome being discussed.
> And in the case of most of the Communist nations that have existed that has been what we have seen.
Every “Communist” nation has been an attempt to implement Leninism or one of its derivatives (e.g., Maoism) in a state without developed capitalism, notionally attempting to implement state socialism and often overtly accepting state capitalism as an interim measure (the name “state capitalism” literally comes from the USSR’s own description of what it presented as a temporary measure.)
> You'd have to forgive one for reading a bit about history
Yeah, a lot of ignorance is grounded in reading only a little bit of history and mistaking modern mixed economies (an actual application of a mix of market and state socialist ideas to a mature capitalist starting point, largely through the efforts of socialists including Communists, and which has largely displaced the system originally named “capitalism" by its socialist critics) as defining “capitalism" and the failure mode of state capitalism in Lenninist-derived regimes as the sole form of “socialism" or “Communism”, and drawing conclusions about the relative merit of socialism and capitalism from that mistaken set of premises.
The solution to that problem is to read more than a little bit of history.
> There is no real reason to think that other approaches to socialism have this problem, and, again, “Communist” denotes a distinction within socialism that is orthogonal to the form of socialism sought but related to utopian end-goal past socialism, and there's even less reason to think that has any bearing on the outcome being discussed.
But we also have to deal with the world as-is for any ideology being implemented or tried. I'm not sure how you move away from state socialism as you have defined it without destroying the state and existing government first.
As you noted already, attempts to implement Communist ideology or Socialist offshoots regardless of flavor have resulted in the state continuing to exist but a narrow and self-perpetuating elite continues to control both the state and, through the state, the means of production and society more generally.
We've already seen this play out. Equally there's no reason to think that other approaches to socialism, regardless of flavor, will play out any differently unless you're also going to advocate for overthrowing the government and destroying the nation state first. Nobody is going to give up their airlines and watches and whatever other things, so you're going to have to seize those.
> mistaking modern mixed economies... mature capitalist starting point, largely through the efforts of socialists including Communists,
You're just doing the same thing so it's only fair.
> The solution to that problem is to read more than a little bit of history.
Back at you.
No, that's exactly not what I said.
What I said was that regimes that are identified as Communist have done that, but that they have also all been one particular flavor (Leninism and its derivatives, which explicitly and centrally focus on extreme and pure form of state socialism -- there are other common factors in Leninism and its descendants, like vanguardism, that have some relevance here, too, but I didn't mention them before and won't go into them in detail now, because its a bit afield.)
I also mentioned that the modern mixed economy that has displaced capitalism stricto sensu throughout the developed world itself is also a (more incremental, and less narrowly focussed on a particular pole of socialist systemic theory) implementation of socialist (incl. Communist) ideals, but with elements of both market socialism and state socialism, implemented largely in places that (in line with Marxist theories of the prerequisites for moving on to the socialist phase) had mature capitalist systems, democratic institutions, and working class consciousness, and that continuing to incrementally build on the progress already made in the modern mixed economy was the best road forward.
> Equally there's no reason to think that other approaches to socialism, regardless of flavor, will play out any differently
Sure there is, because there are other approaches to socialism playing out differently today. That's a pretty good reason to think that other approaches to socialism play out differently than Leninism and its descendants.
Ah right, we just haven't tried the right style of Communism yet. Fascism works too, we just have to try the right flavor. Benevolent dictators are a thing. I'm not going to give Communism a pass here unless you're willing to also embrace that other ideologies get to have their "we haven't tried the right one yet" examples too.
Instead I think it makes more sense to use empirical evidence.
When Communist systems are implemented, they by and large fail, except China, and to the extent China hasn't failed - the Chinese Miracle [1] the progress that was made to improve the quality of life of the Chinese people stems not from CCP policies and their implementation of Communism (regardless of minor differences around philosophy) but instead from their embrace of capitalism and markets.
> I also mentioned that the modern mixed economy that has displaced capitalism stricto sensu throughout the developed world itself is also a (more incremental, and less narrowly focussed on a particular pole of socialist systemic theory) implementation of socialist (incl. Communist) ideals, but with elements of both market socialism and state socialism, implemented largely in places that (in line with Marxist theories of the prerequisites for moving on to the socialist phase) had mature capitalist systems, democratic institutions, and working class consciousness, and that continuing to incrementally build on the progress already made in the modern mixed economy was the best road forward.
You're just hand-waving the things you agree with or good as being socialist or communist and the things you disagree with as being functions of capitalism. Of course capitalist economies can adopt programs and policies that are run by the government - that doesn't necessarily make them "socialist". Of course, when we spend a few minutes continuing our examination we find that part of the reason that capitalism and markets are so successful is because they are able to embrace policies and procedures that work regardless of whether they adhere to any specific ideology, other than free trade (obviously this is a loaded term, but I mean it in the most basic sense). Capitalist economies allow communist businesses. You can start one today. In a Communist country I can't own the means of production. One is tolerant of new and different ideas (Capitalism), another is not (Communism).
The intolerance and violence of Communist ideology and Socialism to the extent they overlap, is one of the reasons it fails. People are required to adhere to the ideology, whereas in Capitalist systems the best business, the best ideas, the best ideologies tend to win out. Though of course like any system you can get stuck in a local minimum.
When you think back to China this is precisely what we see happen. The Chinese Communist Party, and they are Communists by any definition, cannot allow business owners or political dissidents who speak out to "gain power" and they operate various spy apparatus and other control mechanisms because they can't permit ideology that threatens the existence of the CCP.
Why is that?
You would probably argue that it's because they are implementing state capitalism. Horse shit.
China wasn't a developed capitalist country when the Communists took over [2]. And as I mentioned previously, any attempt at implementing Communism that we have observed requires seizure of the means of production that exist in the real world today: airliners, factories, financial systems - so either you destroy those things to avoid "state capitalism", or the inevitable result of the implementation of Communism on the nation state, as we have observed, is just state fascism or Communism (not capitalism as you attempt to misdirect blame toward) or it requires a destruction of the nation state and the very means of production else they be seized.
In the real world you are stuck in a loop. You can't implement whatever flavor of Communism you'd like to, because it requires people giving up their stuff to the State and nobody wants to do that. You can implement it politically, but then you just end up with state fascism/Communism (honestly they are really two sides of the same coin in practice and we should oppose authoritarian regimes regardless of whether they are fascist or communist or otherwise) because the State has to seize all this stuff from people. But once they seize it, as we have seen, they just keep it for themselves while everyone else has to work without real ownership.
> Sure there is, because there are other approaches to socialism playing out differently today. That's a pretty good reason to think that other approaches to socialism play out differently than Leninism and its descendants.
Is there a socialist country in existence you would point to that we can examine and compare it with, say, Sweden or the United Kingdom or other developed capitalist countries?
[1] We're strangely quick to give the CCP credit for the miracle, which was opening of their markets, but we're blind to the fact that the poverty and mass death that occurred in China was precisely because of the same group. So it's fair to not really give the CCP any credit here.
[2] You said: "Every “Communist” nation has been an attempt to implement Leninism or one of its derivatives (e.g., Maoism) in a state without developed capitalism, notionally attempting to implement state socialism and often overtly accepting state capitalism as an interim measure (the name “state capitalism” literally comes from the USSR’s own description of what it presented as a temporary measure.)"
That's not true - the main one is paying rent. You have to keep selling labor to capitalists in exchange for non-robbery vouchers, which you give right back to capitalists so they won't burgle you and throw you out of your home.
If that were the explanation then you'd need another explanation for declining quality issues in communist countries.
A test claim that some problem caused by "capitalism" should always backed up by a proof that the problem doesn't exist in the many other economic systems the world has tried. If only because this forces people to actually think about the economics instead of just using words to evoke an emotional reaction.
Communism would have its own reasons for declining quality: the lack of an individual profit motive. The hope would be that you would no longer be alienated from the products of your work, but that never came close to happening.
So if you were referring to China... they are the world's foremost capitalists right now. Their products get worse because that's what the market tells them.
The fact that people have historically tried devaluing currency for as long as they've had currency suggests that there's a force that favors attempting to sell inferior goods without decreasing price and that this force predates the industrial revolution.
> So if you were referring to China... they are the world's foremost capitalists right now.
This is the same logic by which communists called socialists who believed in democracy "fascists". It's just an attempt to excommunicate people from the church if their interpretation is different from yours.
I mean, China is second only to to the US in minting new billionaires. Sure, gatekeeping and no true Scotsman are real things, but at the end of the day so are definitions. I don't see any definition of communism that allows for the private acquisition of billions of dollars of private capital.
Yes, just as Marx predicted with his law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF):
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/a-world-ra...
People have been calling capitalism "Late Stage" for decades.
Given that the entire history of capitalism spans several centuries, I don't think the term is even necessarily wrong. But it certainly has nothing to do with declining standards of quality - that is a much more recent phenomenon.
Incidentally, this is the exact strategy that VC and Private Equity use. They know how the game is played.
Anyone who believes in capitalism must by necessity believe thatcapital produces part capital and part consumer goods and that the rate of capital production must exceed the rate of capital depreciation. But in the face of stagnating population growth this logic must by necessity result in excess capital, threatening investor profit, to which they respond with drastic anti consumer measures.