this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
694 points (98.2% liked)
Political Memes
8708 readers
2490 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The explanation given in the picture condemns capitalism, not socialism.
Capitalism is the system that assumes actors work in their own rational self interest. It's when capitalism gives "free stuff" that people need to worry about the hidden cost.
The transaction in this case is that the mouse trades its life for a chance of getting food. But, as is typical for capitalism, the person who offers the transaction is intentionally concealing its true cost, making it impossible for the mouse to make any rational decision.
The person who originally made that meme seems to believe that socialism simply means "free stuff". But a mouse trap baited with food is an absolutely textbook example of capitalism.
capitalism will you give me free social media
for increased social bandwidth with friends?
yesssssss
actually creates a hellhole of ad supported data theft, harassment, misinformation, and networks of abuse
if you don't already own capital, everything you buy is paid for with your labor/body/self.
every day we give over small pieces of ourselves just to live in a world that someone else created.
Until I got to your comment I actually thought I had read capitalism. I just thought it was the "if it's free, you're the product".
Yes, I read it and said, "Where's the government?" I don't think you can have socialism without a government or some equivalent. If it's just two entities interacting without outside regulation, then it's definitely not something specific to socialism.
socialism is when the people own the mousetrap
That's closer to the way communism is generally used. Socialism would be more like if the government had a mousetrap program where it distributed mousetraps to people with rodent problems.
I say "generally used" because some people have used "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably, but I think it's just confusing to do that today.