How do you counter the argument that in capitalism everyone has a chance to become rich and the somehow correlated...

How do you counter the argument that in capitalism everyone has a chance to become rich and the somehow correlated argument that if you are very smart and hard working you can make it to the top ? I think you got the gist of it

I know there have already been threads about it but they were too shallow imo. Is there anything that I can read about it, especially from marxists?

By explaining how the origins of capitalism are based around slavery funding the industrial revolution preceded by land grabbing by the state to create an army of labour. Private accumulation, read Marx.

How can you compete if you do not own the means of production?

What kind of fucking idiot falls for this logic for even a moment?

I know, but then they'd argue

then followed by

I usually tackle it from the perspective of inheritance.

Stagnant real wages since the '70s, declining home ownership, ballooning private debt, rising underemployment for degree holders and practically every other socioeconomic metric shows that clearly conditions have changed for the lower classes beyond "they're just lazy scrubs too busy masturbating and playing vidya to make something of themselves!"

I mean for one meritocracy isn't mutually exclusive from socialism– People are still rewarded for their hard work, just not by money.

*Just say pic related…/s*

Tell them they are wrong

shit I fucked it up

This is just blatantly untrue, and anyone who has graduated from high school should know this. If people could work hard enough to avoid starvation and homelessness they would.

And if these people seriously believe that anyone who has insufficient wages for a decent life is as dumb as bricks then they're not even worth engaging with in the first place.

Firstly, I question why anybody should have to work hard to achieve basic necessities of living, then I throat-rape the idiot who asked the question.

No, but they'd argue that if many people have low paying jobs is because they aren't smart enough to climb the system and shit

Anybody not currently living off their parents will know this is false.

...

Well, they'd also say to look at [insert entrepeneur that started from nothing] like Steve joobs or whatever

they'd be retarded tho, fuck 'em

Like I said, they're not worth arguing with at that point. They just need some perspective.

I mean just look at virtually any country outside of America. Could they really believe that 98% of, say, Bolivia just isn't smart enough to afford, I don't know, an actual floor! And if they do, ask them why we should support a system which, even if it helps the "smartest," ultimately results in the suffering of the majority? Is "the rule of the smart" truly the ideal system at the expense of the many?

Honestly I don't know who you are arguing this with, but their ignorance level is astounding

Yeah you hear about the few entrepreneurs who make it from nothing but what about the other 70 who either stay small scale and stagnant or go out of business altogether.

well obviously we don't pay attention to them, that'd wouldn't fit into the ideological paradigm :^)

In theory, anyone can potentially become rich. However, not everyone can. Additionally, some MUST become poor to sustain the rich.

In who's theory? The rich's? Why would we even dignify that theory though? The vast majority of the world can never be rich, there's no argument against this, and their little Murican dreams are fucking idiotic.

Hence why I said not everyone can become rich.

It's just statistically untrue. The greatest determinant of wealth under capitalism is the wealth of your parents, not intelligence, motivation, or industriousness.