this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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I think the answer always comes down to capitalism
Consumerism.
Consumerism is a symptom of capitalism. Capitalism is the illness
Capitalism does play a part, but it’s more the lack of hard rules to curb it rather than the economic method itself. You want to make an even broader claim, just say “greed.”
Couple of things that are either a definition, obvious, or directly observable in literally every capitalist nation in history:
Leaving all other economic systems aside for a moment*, the idea that this is not a direct and natural consequence of capitalism doesn't seem to hold water, both on a theoretical and an empirical level.
(*)And we do this because, analogously, arguing your right hand isn't bleeding by saying your left hand is makes no sense. Capitalism can be studied in its own right. What's more is that the number of alternative systems is infinite, and I'm sure lemmy has a character limit.
Yes, exactly, and if you continue in this same vein, fascism becomes inevitable, too. Capitalism really must be abolished.
This was an understandable perspective when we had those regulations in the USA, but since FDR's New Deal, the Republicans have walked back practically every law and regulation we had to curb the greed of Capitalism. This is the natural tendency of Capitalism
That is the tendency of people. Any system is open to exploitation and greed. The restrictions on growing exploitation are only as good as the humans enforcing them, and people suck. There’s always people trying to force cracks in a system to benefit themselves, and some tribal influences that will allow them to do it.
You are 100% correct. People just want to believe that Capitalism is uniquely corrupt. When literally all of human history has seen us exploit and greedily destroy every social and economic system humans have ever engineered. Now including capitalism.
Good regulations prevent critical exploitation, which is why European capitalism is still functional and looked on positively despite still being capitalism.
Only through regulations can an economic system be maintained. US Capitalism is failing because it has been steadily deregulated for the last 40 years.
So yes, Capitalism is poison. But so is blowfish unless you cut it right. Every system we've ever built is also poisoned for failure unless it's always cut down and regulated to its basics.
I'm really sorry to burst this bubble, but as a European, no. Capitalism is devouring us from the inside out. Haven't you seen that basically every EU nation has a surging far right?
Capitalism is not uniquely capable of being exploited more than the systems which it replaced, but you're wrong that it can be regulated. Yes, regulations can be passed, but they cannot be maintained. Capitalism will inevitably trend towards fascism as a matter of design. It is just human nature.
This is why we need a system that acknowledges the reality of human nature. That's why I'm an anarchist. It's the only system which really accounts for the fact that humans will abuse power for selfish reasons.
Compare Europe's surge of Far Right to the US's. They're handling it a lot better and passing regulations to prevent it in the future. Even getting laws passed to regulate the total use of social media by kids.
I'm not saying capitalism is perfect in Europe, I'm saying it's a better example of how to regulate it into something sustainable.
Respectfully, the biggest flaw in anarchism imo is that it's not a system at all. It's basically just tribalism and immediately devolves into the rule of whoevers strongest in those tribes.
Humans are social creatures. We have literally always made societies based on expanded family dynamics and rules, as that is literally human nature. We want family and structure, and to do that we create rules that structure needs to follow for the family to survive.
Anarchism doesn't really work for the elderly. The sick. The disabled. Anarchism doesn't really do anything to protect the families we create as whoever is strongest can just take what they want when they want to.
Granted, Capitalism is horrible, but literally any system we create is doomed to become horrible and fucked up if we cannot regulate it from corruption. If we can't prevent it from being taken over by strong opinionated assholes, it will also eventually devolve into tribalism.
Literally the problem that needs solving is just our own dark nature. That some of us are born without the capacity to understand our social nature, and survive exclusively through exploiting it. Those people are the sociopaths that have destroyed every society we've ever had, including the earliest recorded ones that were basically anarchistic.
It is within our nature to be highly social, but the few of us born without that nature only want to take from others instead of giving.
That dual nature of humanity is something that no civilization we've ever built has survived.
It just hasn't come into power YET. You are being hugely dismissive. I am European and I follow US and European politics extremely closely and I am outright telling you that Europe is a hair away from the same shit, if not worse, than the US. Many EU nations are punishing people for protesting genocide.
Capitalism can not be reformed. It cannot be regulated. It is like a force of nature. It will always lead to fascism. It is inevitable.
You don't know what anarchism is about, I'd encourage you to learn more about anarchism before dismissing it. I'd recommend checking out an anarchist FAQ.
Any European country with ranked choice voting is safe from the 2 system exploit that has allowed people like Trump and Orban to take office.
I've already agreed that any system we design will collapse including capitalism. Regulations are what's needed to maintain any system from collapse. This includes Anarchism.
Without rules, what's to stop sociopaths taking what they want? The issue isn't what system is best, it's what can be done to prevent any system from collapsing.
The answer is regulations. Not the complete absense of them. We have an incredible amount of data and studies that consistently show how anarchistic societies based on self motivation are immediately exploited by strong men sociopaths.
The same with capitalism. The enemies of both are the same, but at least with capitalism there is a mechanism through which to maintain regulations. Self-governing communities always self corrupt, as evidenced by the US's now entire corrupt system that was previously self-governing. It just took centuries to corrupt because of strict regulations. But in those centuries people had livelihoods.
Anarchism provides no mechanism by which this can be protected for so long by design. It's a system that allows for maximum exploitation by those who want to exploit it. That is the double edge of not having bigger heirarchal structures - there's no reason not to take through strength if you have it. No punishment for breaking rules as there are no general rules that society can reliably enforce.
Historically, Anarchistic societies bend the knee to the first warlord that wants to conquer them, and then only after generations of suffering feel that maybe there should be rules and a hierarchy of law to prevent such exploitation.
I'm very familiar with what Anarchism is. And you're just focusing on the rose colored parts of it the same as you think I'm doing for Capitalism.
No system works. Period. But rules do. And unfortunately a system is needed for those rules. We just haven't found the right one yet that can last for more than a couple hundred years.
This is where we disagree. What are the fundemental tenants of capitalism vs say, communism?
(Just doing a thought experiment with you, in good faith)
Respectfully I am not willing to get into this debate. If communism worked, we’d be doing it. Unfortunately so far it seems to have incredibly weak protections against authoritarian takeover despite its overall egalitarian appeal.
E: triggered .ml?
Do you think capitalism works? It very clearly works for some, but would you claim that it works in a broader sense?
Double respectfully back, I have to agree with the other commentor. I dont think you have a good understanding of what communism is. Which is fine. Global North countries, at the behest of the powerful elite, have made it their life's mission to destroy communism (i wonder why). They do that while pushing Neo-Liberal ideas and agendas constantly (curioussssss).
In your post, you have identified a symptom of capitalism. Not the cause of societal failures.
Also, unlike saying "humans beings are naturally greedy" (which isnt true), capitalism as an economic system reinforces and rewards any greed fhat MIGHT appear in A VANISHINGLY SMALL amount of people (true sociopaths). Whereas, under communism or socialism, those sociapaths would not only be unrewarded, their entire ideology would be forsaken from establishing a foothold in power (please extrapolate to the rest of humanity).
That said, if you dont want to talk about it, its all good baby. Thanks for listening to my Ted talk.
(Btw, this was all in good faith. Genuinely not trying to mock or tesse you. Just being silly).
Lmk if you ever feel like talking more
Oh you sweet summer child.
And this is why you believe that. Head, meet sand.
Props for being polite about it though.
The assumption that I lack knowledge of alternate economic and governing systems and left them unconsidered is as insulting as your smug confidence that any other system is immune to corruption and disparity.
There's no curbing capitalism. The very thesis of it requires that the most successful 1, find 2, exploit 3, lobby to lock up enough, so to "pull up the ladder behind themselves", any and all loopholes of the legal system that allows them to get ahead.
You can try regulating it but capitalism will always find a way around your rules.
I disagree. Capitalism can be curbed. The failure is greed on humanity’s part always trying to carve out more for themselves. No system of government or economy has proven otherwise over the long term. They all eventually fail.
E: Lol, downvotes seem to indicate some real confident fools here think they have an alternative all figured out that somehow eliminates what humans have been doing forever.
It can't. It always leads to fascism. It always has. It always will.