• Kalcifer
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    2 days ago

    This meme seems to be logically flawed — essentially, it’s an example of a faulty generalization: Let A be a set containing “Elites”, “Oligarchs”, and “Plutocrats”, let B be a set of things that are considered “bad”, and let C be a set of things that are considered capitalist; if A is a subset of B (ie all things in A are “bad”), and A is a subset of C (ie all things in A are capitalist) (assuming that those are correct subsumptions), that doesn’t imply that C is necessarily a subset of B (ie that things that are capitalist are bad, or, more generally that capitalism is bad) — there could be elements of C not in B. C is a subset of B if and only if all elements of C are in B (ie all things that are capitalist must be bad). So, for the meme’s logic to be sound A would have to equal C (ie capitalism only contains elites, oligarchs and plutocrats).

    Of course, to avoid forming an argument from fallacy, I would like to clarify that this isn’t to argue that the final implied claim of “capitalism is the problem” is wrong, nor the explicit claim that “socialism isn’t the problem”, or, rather that “socialism is the problem” is wrong, but, instead, simply that the argument used is unsound.