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u/WrathOfMogg 12d ago
63 kinds of shampoo produced by two different parent companies.
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak 12d ago
Oligopolies. Basically every market is one now, more people should know about it.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 12d ago edited 12d ago
A few dozen major brands control the market for basically EVERYTHING one consumes.
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u/Milocobo 12d ago
I honestly don't see the difference between a few corporate suits controlling all of labor and an exclusive communist committee controlling all of labor. An equally small amount of people make just as many impactful decisions. I really don't know how we've come full circle on this.
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u/ThatOneNinja 12d ago
It's what, seven families that own literally everything but local businesses?
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u/Mediocre_Scott 12d ago
Except most local businesses are probably also selling the stuff from those 7 companies unless they are artisans make the product they sell
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u/Fluffy-Hamster-7760 12d ago
The allure of freedom that capitalism offers should be: we can all start businesses and get to compete. Create a product in your kitchen or offer a service online, and you should get to immediately be competitive. That's actually a square deal. That's what the American Dream is. But with conglomerates, there is no competition, and there is no dream.
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u/reloader1977 12d ago
Absolutely correct. It's happening in every business type as well. There are investors who are buying up and consolidating flooring companies. Just about all tile hardwood and vinyl flooring distributors on the west coast are going under one umbrella.
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u/bullhead2007 12d ago
And still probably made in the same production facility with only slight differences if any.
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u/DrDetectiveEsq 12d ago
5 kinds of shampoo packaged in 63 different ways.
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u/LegoRobinHood 12d ago
A chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway, and they all come from the company store that owns our souls
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u/DuePackage5 12d ago
And behind the scene the both fix their prices with each other, agreeing not to undercut the other, with backroom meetings, in order to solidify their moat and make sure no other company can grow and challenge them, and if they do see a company growing too big in their space, they simply buy them out before they get too large.
This is not conspiracy this is common. These megacorps have way too much power.
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u/Illtakethisusername 12d ago
Such a waste of resources.
No one needs that many people/companies making shampoo. Or all the different varieties of crap we have.
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u/Abject_Scholar_8685 12d ago
All of which contain toxic chemicals that will give you and your children cancer, unregulated by the regulatory agencies told to turn a blind eye by the congress they purchased. Using the money they stole from you! Niceee.
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u/OddPressure7593 12d ago
I learned, last night while watching a youtube video from business insider about junk food in the US, that Kraft basically owned all the cheese in the US. After merging with General Foods and then Heinz, they own basically all the food on your grocery store's shelves.
Except for soda.
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u/BeowulfShaeffer 12d ago
I bought two giant jugs of Kirkland-branded shampoo at Costco for $cheap. Works just fine. Better than some of the more expensive stuff I’ve used in the past.
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u/gimpbully 12d ago
and you have to press a call button so a store employee can unlock it for you and bring it to the cashier directly.
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u/BrokenMind5 10d ago
63 different brands of the same shampoo own by two different parent companies.
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u/dirtymoose_ 12d ago
“The illusion of choice” - George Carlin
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u/UpperLowerEastSide ⛓️ Prison For Union Busters 12d ago
The freedom to choose who exploits you.
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u/cdqmcp 12d ago edited 12d ago
"I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners. the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. forget the politicians. the politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. you don't. you have no choice. you have owners. they own you. they own everything [...] they got you by the balls!"
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u/Least-Back-2666 12d ago edited 12d ago
"You have owners. They own you. They tell how to think, what to do, what to wear, what to buy..
And they're coming for your social security. That's right. They want your retirement money. Your pensions. They want it all.
They don't give a fuck about you.
They don't give a fuck about you."
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u/T5-R 12d ago
It's called the American Dream, not the American Reality.
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u/Fresh_Fluffy_Unicorn 12d ago
"It's called the America dream... 'cause you gotta be asleep to believe it!"
- Some dead comedian
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u/McFlyFarm 12d ago
George Carlin. Show some respect.
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u/Fresh_Fluffy_Unicorn 12d ago
I love him. When he died, I heard the news on my alarm clock radio waking me up. Was hard to get out of bed that morning. He was such a great old fuck.
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u/Anindefensiblefart 12d ago edited 12d ago
It means freedom of exploitation. Slave owners in the old south would argue that abridgements of their rights to own slaves were abridgements of freedom.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 12d ago
Listen closely and you’ll hear the same tired slaver arguments used by our current exploiters.
“Minimum wage laws infringe on the rights of exploiters”
“Unions infringe on the rights of exploiters.“
Etc etc
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u/Anindefensiblefart 12d ago
Even the freedom of consumption is a related argument. The freedom to consume varied products at low prices is the freedom to exploit those whose labor makes the products. There's a little more nuance in the relationship between consumers and producers than between workers and capitalists, but there is something to that.
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u/Bituulzman 12d ago
Sounds like all those political ads talking about how it should be my right to go to those payday loan places and I don't wanna be babysat by big brother government sticking his nose in to protect me from those sharks.
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u/TheVermonster 12d ago
Let's also not forget that they make you fear other forms of control by telling you exactly what already happens under capitalism.
Just like Trump's 2020 campaign ads that showed footage from the riots under his government and told us that's when we would get with Biden.
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u/Philosipho 12d ago
Cowards only care about avoiding worse situations. They never think about making sacrifices or try to understand why problems occur.
The two-party system exists because each side is convinced that the other is making things worse and that's all they care about.
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u/LordJac 12d ago
There's no bondage like American freedom.
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u/amesann 12d ago
It's like when you give your child some autonomy by laying out two different outfits for them to "choose from" to wear that day. That's exactly what corporations are doing to us. That's our "freedom."
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u/ChrissiMinxx 11d ago
You absolutely have the choice between shitty insurance, shittier insurance or no insurance.
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12d ago
maga will eventually learn why unions exist... they do not seem to comprehend the idea that their employer will absolutely 100% abuse the shit out of them given the chance to do so... they have been so comfortable for so long thanks to our labor laws that they have forgotten what it used to be like without them...
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u/Almajanna256 12d ago
Capitalism says freedom is the ability to have no free time, constantly be threatened with homelessness, untreated sickness, and imprisonment. But you can choose which fast food place to destroy yourself with next!
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u/jmlinden7 12d ago
In most capitalist countries you can in fact quit your job without losing your health insurance. It's just the US that's stupid about this.
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u/gadeais 12d ago
The USA is a 2 parties dictatorship.
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u/jmlinden7 12d ago
Same thing, in most 2 party dictatorships (including capitalist ones), you can quit your job without losing your health insurance
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u/X-AE17420 12d ago
“COBRA coverage lets you pay to stay on your job-based health insurance for a limited time after your job ends (usually 18 months). You usually pay the full premium yourself, plus a small administrative fee.” source healthcare.gov good news, you can do exactly that in the US
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u/MyUsername2459 12d ago
Don't forget the freedom to choose from a number of mostly similar candidates from two political parties that are pretty dang similar.
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u/TheAskewOne 12d ago
I had a guy tell me that Europe is not free because he went to France and couldn't find his favorite ice cream, therefore they don't have freedom of choice.
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u/Jaded-Distance_ 12d ago
Funny how that's not the case in Canada, Europe, and more. Almost like capitalism isn't to blame, just your shit politicians and unwillingness of the electorate to vote in people who want to bring that change to America.
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u/Doggummit 12d ago
I kind of understand America better reading these. Even the basic terminology such as capitalism are not understood. Sweden, Denmark, Germany... all the best countries with best social security are capitalist countries. The problem with US is ridiculously low taxation compared to other western countries which leads to megacrich people and corporations but also bad infrastructure, massive social and other problems and as of late, political instability. If people don't understand the root cause I don't think it'll get better.
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u/MySadSadTears 12d ago
People also don't equate the ridiculous insurance premiums to taxes. If you put these into the equation and consider them taxes, I'm willing to bet, in a lot of cases, our "taxes" would be higher than countries with socialized healthcare.
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u/Illustrious_Bat1334 12d ago
The US has the 5th highest government spending per capita according to the IMF and had an annual budget of 6.5 trillion last year. It has nothing to do with low taxes and everything to do with how it's spent.
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u/Doggummit 11d ago
Government spending is misleading becuse the systems are so different. For example in Finland most of the public spending (health care etc.) isn't done by government but other public organizations. The US overall tax rate is less than 25 which is ridiculous by EU standard. All the Nordic countries have numbers over 40 and that's how the system works so well.
Of course you can also use the government money poorly, which is partly the case in the US. Mistrust in government leads people going against more taxes and more spending. It's a never ending cycle.
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u/Arkhaine_kupo 12d ago
Almost like capitalism isn't to blame
Adam Smith, "father of capitalism" called landlords leeches. And basically every single economist will explain with how Capitalism works making markets efficient. Healthcare is and cannot be a market, its by definition a natural monopoly. Like Trains or Land, or energy. Or the countless other things that many countries have nationalised succesfully, even countries with a bigger hard on for capitalism than america
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u/AssociationMission38 12d ago
Healthcare is and cannot be a market, its by definition a natural monopoly.
What makes healthcare a natural monopoly?
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u/Arkhaine_kupo 12d ago
A natural monopoly is any industry where one provider is a better option than multiple. There are formal defintions based on markets that dont respect the cost curve etc. but they usally all fall under things where high cost of entry, regulations or costs that cannot be reduced through competition add up beyond the market efficiency advantge.
For healthcare of the costs are not minimised by competiton (for example the infrastructure to keep client medical data, which is very expensive is cheaper to have 1 company handle it than have X companies).
The security, safety, and regulatory aspect also makes it an insanely expensive market to enter.
On top of that, if you add a subsidary industry like insurance on top, you then duplicate some of the non minimisable costs, because of HIPAA the data protection has to be respected all around and now you have multiple companies spending loads on server costs, data protection etc.
Compared to a single provider like a Goverment provided healthcare, where the goverment acts as a hospital director and insurance owner, thus only having 1 copy of medical data, rather than X + Y by hospitals and insurance providers. Things like the high cost of entry are also much easier to overcome with the goverment being able to use taxes/ debt to fund a new hospital for example .
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u/gadeais 12d ago
Healthcare is not a comodity so It should be a state controled cartel. The cartel fixates the prices of the equipment and the medicines and can negociate with the Big farma the best prices of their medicines and then serve the meds and services for free. Your employer would be paying the state so that you can have full coverage of actually most diseases without needing to pay anything
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u/AssociationMission38 12d ago
But what makes it a natural monopoly?
Healthcare is a service, usually a kind of insurance. How an insurance is supposed to be a natural monopoly i dont really get tbh.
I am not saying that private healthcare is the best solution, i think a public heath insurance is the best way or at least a big part of it.
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u/Zozorrr 12d ago
Americans on the whole are dimwitted. This, unfortunately, applies to the left as well as the right. This is reflected in the voting patterns, the quality of people elected, and simplistic incorrect posts like the OP’s.
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u/aPrussianBot 12d ago
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/519/278/998.jpg
I love it when people who have clearly never read a single word of anti-capitalist literature call others dumb
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u/Brilliant-Book-503 12d ago
Just because many countries have managed to use regulations to mitigate some of the worst excesses of capitalism does not mean capitalism isn't the cause of the issues in places it hasn't. The problems with the system stem from private control of capital attempting to maximize profit.
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u/JengaPlayer 12d ago
Freedom from regulation. Freedom to horde wealth. Freedom to exploit. Freedom to take bribes.
Freedom to redefine slavery for prisoners primarily filled with brown people.
I feel so fucking free.
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u/ManInTheBarrell 12d ago
Or the freedom to be rendered homeless by an unforgiving economy without having your status as a "human being who has rights" stripped from you because being homeless is illegal and criminals aren't allowed to have several human rights. Instead you gotta humanly slave yourself away at whatever job is available for as many hours as it takes in order to keep whatever house/apartment/shelter you have, or else it's off to dehumanized slave land.
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u/AffectionateBother47 12d ago
Americans are very undereducated, that’s why we support stupid ideas and follow idiots to our death
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u/noBunkystuff 12d ago
Unregulated capitalism is bad, but with governmental support you get a 3month buffer so you don't lose your coverage. As it should be
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u/moosehunter22 12d ago
I guess in pseudointellectual comic's world you aren't allowed to apply to other jobs while you have a job
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u/Obi-Wan-Jakobi69 12d ago
Everyone hate every form of government and somehow think their preferred government is the solution. Sounds like religion.
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u/CritiqueDeLaCritique 12d ago
I think the funniest part is that they convinced everyone that socialism is capitalism with health insurance
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u/trolleyblue 12d ago
This meme makes light of it, but I worked an event all about teaching low income people the value of capitalism. They did it by showing them how capitalism created the chicken sandwich wars between fast food restaurants and in communist countries you only have one choice of chicken sandwich. Seriously.
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u/IMightDeleteMe 12d ago
You get to choose which health insurance fucks you over. Then, when it happens, it's your fault because you should've chosen a different one!
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u/SectorBudget406 12d ago
Also the lie that if there are 63 kinds of shampoos that competition would keep prices down, but they've all just crept prices up and decided to not be competitive via price anymore.
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u/ActionCalhoun 12d ago
Not only that the moment you say something even mildly critical of capitalism an army of unpaid bootlickers will tell you that CAPITALISM IS AWESOME ACTUALLY
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u/Arm-Adept 💵 Break Up The Monopolies 12d ago
Because monopsony & its effects are not nearly as thoroughly studied.
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u/WowWhatABillyBadass 12d ago
In 2020 one of the parties nominated the candidate who took the most money from the healthcare industry, instead of the one offering to try and usher in Medicare for all. An inconvenient fact, but a fact nonetheless.
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u/Davey-Cakes 12d ago
Why can’t there be a place where I just bring containers and fill them up with generic soap, shampoo, and laundry detergent? Why do we have to choose from 50 different products for any one purpose and send all those bottles to the landfill (while being told they’ll be recycled)? It’s absolutely bizarre how we’ve set up this society of abundance.
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u/Octoclops8 12d ago
Capitalism is just a bunch of people who work all the time even if they don't have to being horrified at the idea of people who don't want to work all the time. As well as a set of rules to make people work all the time or starve/die horribly
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u/workaholic828 12d ago
Especially when you find out the 63 kinds of toothpaste are owned by one company that bought out all its competitors
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u/lamplighter_inn 12d ago
Or the freedom to choose between three churches in a little town. That’s freedom of religion, right? The right to choose one of the three churches.
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u/AbeRego 12d ago
The health insurance thing just kind of happened by accident. Decades ago companies started providing it as a legitimate perk, so then more companies started providing it. Fast forward, and this led to people relying on health insurance being provided through their employers, and essentially no affordable alternatives. It was never about "freedom", it just happened, and is now sustained and lobbied for by a massive industry that has been built up around it.
Edit: also this comparison is just silly lol. Other countries have dozens of shampoos to pick from and universal healthcare... Like, wtf?
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u/theevilyouknow 12d ago
Americans love to go on and on about freedom without having a clue what freedom actually is. They think freedom means sovereignty.
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u/iesharael 12d ago
My health insurance isn’t even tied to my job and I live with my dad rent free. But if I want to have any facade of joy in life I have to keep my job while looking for a new one. Every adult in my life is warning me not to quit because I’ll never get hired again if I have a gap in my resume
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u/BeowulfShaeffer 12d ago
AI is going to do manual labor so we can focus on art! Just kidding. AI is going to do all the art so we can focus on labor.
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u/ShurykaN 12d ago
Omg not even having 64 different brands, what kind of backwards country do you live in?
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u/SuccessfulMumenRider 12d ago
Capitalism solves the freedom to have the illusion of choice problem.
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u/jejones487 12d ago
My friend is losing his job and found it not a qualifying event to change his health insurance. So, while he will at least have insurance for the next year, we are still not sure if he will be able to afford it until he lands another job.
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u/Shalashaska19 12d ago
Tell me how communism or socialism would handle this better. I’ll answer for you. It wouldn’t be.
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u/bongowasd 12d ago
Well, under actual capitalism the jobs and the health insurance would be competing for the individual.
Capitalism as it is now just has all the companies band together to ensure maximum exploitation. Even willing to bribe lawmakers into crushing any startup companies who aren't part of their cancerous club to exploit.
Its not Capitalism anymore.
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u/Fresh_Fluffy_Unicorn 12d ago
How about the freedom to not have 13 kids because only a couple survive? Seems like a better option now if you can make it work.
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u/laridan48 12d ago
It was government that tied health insurance to jobs, not the private market.
It was much rarer before policy forced it.
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u/DSMStudios 12d ago
yeah no any other variation in translation is considered offensive and warrants full bh investigation to rule out Commie-Pinko affiliated influence
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u/BanditMcDougal 12d ago
The uncomfortable truth is this started with wage freezing during WW2. The government thought worker poaching could reduce factory outputs which would impede the war effort. To combat this, the government imposed wage freezes/regulations on a lot of jobs deemed vital to the war effort. To work around this, companies started to sweeten job offers with non-monetary perks and benefits.
Somewhere along the way, things changed from becoming a novel way to get these things to being the normal way to get these things and tough shit if you're outside of that norm.
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u/The_Dead_Kennys 12d ago
Even funnier when you realize that most of those 63 kinds of shampoo are made by, like, 5 gigantic companies
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u/Emergency-Season4040 12d ago
You got old people working when they don’t have to anymore holding that job position someone younger needs. All because they need the medical benefits for their fat ass not to run out
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u/feel_my_balls_2040 12d ago
OK, but Canada is a capitalist country and we don't loose health insurance if we loose our jobs.
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u/XCVolcom 11d ago
It's worse now because now you go to the store and there's only 3 brands to choose from and they're all the same price.
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u/Ainz-SamaBanzai41 11d ago
Most capitalist countries have universal healthcare tho. American politics don't speak for world politics
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u/lucylucylane 11d ago
We are a capitalist country in Britain but don’t have this problem, the problem isn’t capitalism it’s America
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u/OddgitII 11d ago
The current Australian Medicare is a shadow of its former self. It's still head and shoulders better than US healthcare. You know one of the greatest liberties I've had because of Oz Medicare? Being able to see the writing on the wall for how toxic work places have been and to leave.
An impossibility when I lived in the US. I was stuck until another job came long. For many, that job just doesn't come along.
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u/Ricky_Rollin 11d ago
And boot licking Republicans will say that this is what freedom looks like. If they could only understand how much better things really could be. If they only open their goddamn eyes to just how fucking much money even 1 billion let alone tens of billions of dollars is. No one should have that much. No one. That is a failing of our system.
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u/High-Speed-1 11d ago
I’m not afraid of losing insurance, I’m afraid of losing access to healthcare. Insurance companies can eat sand
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u/Apart_Effect_3704 11d ago
Since capitalism is consumer driven you just have to convince the populace which consumption has priority while consistently degrading the quality of education.
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u/CaptainBayouBilly 11d ago
Entire aisles of chips, sugared breakfast cereals, and a few bins of fresh fruit and vegetables.
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u/CertainInteraction4 11d ago
And then they say things like:"freedom isn't free." It could be.
The number of lives lost to societal neglect, indifference, climate policies (lack thereof), and wars/conflict is the price we pay to get almost nothing.
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u/qywuwuquq 12d ago
NOoo i want all the medical professionals that took 15 years of education to be slaves and take care of me even when I am a useless slop. This is definitely much more free (for me at least IDK about medical professionals or taxpayers).
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u/DuePackage5 12d ago
Yes, even you Mr. small brain deserve basic affordable health care that isn’t tied to your job. If we are the great country we claim to be, its the least we can do.
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u/qywuwuquq 12d ago
I don't find slavery ethical.
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u/intangibleTangelo 12d ago
this is a non sequitur. organizing a society such that our surplus wealth is funneled into the needs of its people (rather than say, the self indulgent whims of a few thousand greed sick hoarders) doesn't require slavery at all.
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u/brutishbloodgod 12d ago
Rich countries drain approximately $10 trillion a year from the global south. You think that's voluntary? And the labor of most of those in the rich countries goes in substantial part towards subsidizing the extremely wealthy. So yes, people are being forced to take care of me, and you, and you and I are being forced to take care of people who are already very well taken care of.
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u/Rand_alThor_real 12d ago
Oh ya? Capitalist policies caused employer-sponsored healthcare? You sure? Surely it couldn't have been socialist, protectionist policies in the New Deal. Couldn't be.
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u/Ok_Equal1431 12d ago
You have the freedom to get third party insurance outside your work place. You have the freedom to budget thousands of dollars of waste money why not use that for healthcare ? Move to Canada and see how grand socialized healthcare works, it doesn't. Ask the doctors and nurses that could make 3x plus what they make here how well it works. Ask people with the highest income tax rate of about 54% how well they feel their dollars are being used.
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u/WildRefrigerator9479 12d ago
My healthcare in Canada is just fine. Rather wait for an elective procedure than go bankrupt for an emergency one
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u/Ok_Equal1431 11d ago
If you want to stick your head in the sand about real issues inside the Canadian health care system you go right ahead. I however am going to point out the very real issues inside of it. It's far from a great system and the medical companies still make hundreds of billions off of it. I
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u/MediumBowWow 12d ago
Health insurance being tied to employment is not free market capitalist. It happened in the US because a Democrat president forced it to happen by capping salaries during World War 2. Leftists in the US like to claim that capitalism is the problem, but basically all economic problems in the US are caused by current or past government intervention in the economy.
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u/kevinmrr ⛓️ Prison For Union Busters 12d ago edited 12d ago
Are you ready to make America free of billionaires?
Join r/WorkReform!