this post was submitted on 09 May 2026

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submitted 6 months ago by Karmanopoly@lemmy.world to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago (22 children)

How's that? Every current democracy, including the decently functioning ones, started as an oligarchic system of some kind.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world -4 points 6 months ago (21 children)

I was just commenting that pre-Trumplethinskin is an imaginary state as the US was fascist before we had a name for it. You can't harken back to a supposed better time when it never existed except inside the head of a misinformed person.

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago (20 children)

Even if we accept that, doesn't the existence of somewhat functional democracies that also started as oligarchies refute the statement that "you can't really recover"?

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[–] MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social 2 points 6 months ago*

I believe they are saying that since the previous state was not functional, returning to it would not count as recovery and one needs to fix underlying problems that existed for most/all of the USA's history.

In git terms: Reverting the branch to the pre-2016 state will not be enough because the issue was caused by old technical debt and one will have to refactor that as well.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world -3 points 6 months ago* (18 children)

No, I reject your musing. Numerous studies have shown the will of the people is a false premise. We live in a fascist world that uses democracy as a window dressing for oligarchy.

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (13 children)

Which study, for example?

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (12 children)

https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (11 children)

That's a US-only study.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago* (10 children)

They have done similar studies around the world. From my research the biggest indicator is a wealth gap. While this alone does not confirm fascism what does is an ever increasing wealth gap where an extreme minority of the population owns the majority of wealth.

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (9 children)

Wealth inequality is a consequence of the existence of markets, and long predates "fascism." I guess you are using that term in some kind of hyperbolic sense, but I don't think these type of word games are very constructive.

As it happens, inequality has been moderately successfully addressed since the advent of progressive taxation and welfare states, and some of the democracies we are talking about are among the most egalitarian societies in human history, certainly when it comes to post-neolithic times.

Even aside from oligarchs behind the scenes, it is no surprise that voters' interests and desires do not align very well with policy in the US, where a two-party system with legalized bribery is in place, and voting rights are unequally weighed and conditional. These factors are either not at all or to a much lesser extent relevant in top-tier democracies.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago* (8 children)

Thank you for responding, but please provide evidence of a country without an ever widening wealth gap or go home.

I get you don't understand fascism. It is okay. As Mussolini put it is corporatism. The evolution of corporatism is a corportocracy. Corporations are the dominant form of all social constructs currently regardless of governments or cultures.

I also understand you are under the illusion that any country that exists provides the rights that human beings deserve. There is no country that exists that deserves humanity.

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago (7 children)

There are many examples of economies where wealth inequality is not "ever widening." Even in very recent US history there have been times of decreasing inequality, such as in the wake of the Great Recession.

Sustained decreasing trends have been observed in many Western economies in the period from the late 19th Century to the 1980s, when many of these economies introduced redistributive measures.

Corporations are the dominant form of all social constructs currently regardless of governments or cultures.

Markets and inequality also long predate corporations, which emerged in the early modern period.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago (6 children)

So then you can provide no example. As I have researched, there is no nation currently that has the trend of reducing the wealth gap. I understand you do not view this as proof and that is okay.

I brought up the fact that corporations are currently the dominant social construct in our society regardless of country. You can agree or disagree.

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago* (5 children)

Here is one example of an economy where wealth inequality (quantified using the Gini coefficient) decreased somewhat in the period 2011-2022.

I brought up the fact that corporations are currently the dominant social construct in our society regardless of country. You can agree or disagree.

It's hard to agree or disagree, as it's not clear what you mean by "dominant social construct." Compared to what?

What I do certainly disagree with, is that inequality is necessarily related to either corporations or fascism, since both concepts are much newer than inequality.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

https://nltimes.nl/2026/05/06/rich-get-richer-dutch-tax-system-widens-income-disparities

"Between 2011 and 2019, the wealthiest 0.01 percent of households’ income increased by over 70 percent, "

You got me excited for a second, but I have already done this

"wealth inequality is high, where the richest 10% hold 56% of the total wealth (as of early 2025 data), compared to the bottom 90% sharing the rest."

Also, the Dutch are fascist as fuck. Not as in fascism = bad but as in fadcism = corporatism.

https://newint.org/migration/2025/can-dutch-fight-fascism-head

As far as explaining what the dominant form of culture means here is an article based off the movie corporation. Obviously this is a US perspective, but all my research indicates that corporations are dominating all of Europe as well.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/a-critical-look-at-the-corporations-dominant-role-in-society/

I never said fascism is the only cause of inequality. It is the evolution of corporatism which I believe has evolved into a corportocracy. The revolving door between private and public and regulatory capture have created the reality that corporations are the ones crafting and getting the majority of all policy passed around the world. While in the US is extreme at almost 90% of all policy, in Europe it is slightly better with 70-80% of all policy.

This is what dominant means.

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago* (3 children)

There are different measures of wealth inequality, and they are going to give different results.

For income inequality the typical approach is to consider the distribution of income post-transfers by Gini coefficient. In this sense the Dutch economy has among the lowest inequalities in the world (Gini ~0.26-0.29 depending on the estimate and methodology), though still a bit worse than the most equal societies (Gini ~0.23-0.25). (By comparison, the US is around 0.40-0.42.)

wealth inequality is high

Compared to what? What it should be? Other countries? Other times? For much of history, most people weren't even allowed to own property aside from their personal belongings. Do I, personally, think inequality should be reduced? Yes. But let's not deny that these societies are among the most egalitarian in history, "corporatism" or not, and the feudal and ancient civilizations were all invariably much worse.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

Yes, there are countless way to measure these metrics, thank you for taking the time to explain this. Also, in this particular area of Europe are some of the best wealth distributed areas on Earth.

This does not make it okay though, as you point out yourself. As fascism grows in power this wealth gap will continue to grow as it has in all but one place in Europe for a little amount of time. I believe it was Slovakia, but it had been awhile since I read about it.

Currently this wealth gap is increasing in the entire world which has lead me to the conclusion along with other research that fascism has captured the world's economy and has for some time.

Fascism doesn't have a real left/right ideology either, but it will happily stroke the far right since their message is so effective due to propaganda. Fascism represents the monied interests and in theory if these entities were altruistic we would be living in a different world. So ultimately it is a cultural problem rather than a system issue which in a lot of ways is a bitter pill to swallow.

This does raise the question of inevitability. Will capitalism and fascism inherently lead to these wealth gaps that allow monied interests almost complete control of government policy. So far it appears so.

Is this a bad thing? I tend to believe yes due to several major issues with the top being environmental degredation and the next being arms proliferation. Human suffering due to these two issues is enormous and there doesn't appear to be a way to counterbalance this.

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[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

I think what you're still missing, aside from the situation of the "wealth gap increasing" being a bit more nuanced, is that extreme inequality long predates corporations and capitalism. Therefore, using these concepts to attempt to explain it begs the question of what happened before.

Again, wealth inequality is primarily a consequence of the existence of markets, capitalist or not, corporatist or not. The modern market economy in fact allows societies today to much more effectively combat the issue. The Bible doesn't mention progressive taxation, estate taxes and welfare states since those societies never had the administrative capacity to organize it.

Now, you can argue that current societies that do use these tools effectively (certain European countries) should increase the degree of progressivity of taxes, and I would agree. But it has absolutely nothing to do with corporations or capitalism directly. The influence of moneyed interests in these countries, while arguably still too large, is not anywhere near the overt bribery and naked corruption we can observe in the United States.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I totally get you are in denial about fascism around the world. Imperalism is not unique to the US nor is supporting genocide. We can see Germany and the UK both supporting Israel full heartedly. Many European countries are extremely corrupt as well, like France that supplies weapons to kill civilians all over the world. Furthermore, issues like anti-muslim sentiment abounds.

The US is horrible for sure, but Europe does everything the US does. Just like your belief that inequality predates modern markets so does European imperialism predate the US.

You are also horribly in denial of the reality of capitalism. It is out of control in Europe. While it may be slightly better at initially spreading the wealth around once corporations take over exploitation and wealth concentration abound.

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[–] LostCarcosan@lemmy.today 1 point 6 months ago (3 children)

You gotta be careful or you'll cut yourself on all that edge

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Please, that is just the tip of the iceberg. I will gladly bring receipts.

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[+] wavebeam@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 child)

[deleted]

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 point 6 months ago

I produced evidence, I don't speak other languages so my ability to conduct this type of research in other countries is limited. As I explained, my personal metric is an ever growing wealth gap.

Since I have provided evidence and I have done extensive research let's turn this around. Please provide evidence of a country without an ever growing wealth gap and maybe I will believe we are not living in a fascist world.

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