Basic Trope: Capitalism is portrayed as immoral and/or ineffective in improving life for people.
- Straight: The Capitalist Empire of Troperia is a horrible place to live. The MegaCorps rule the country by decree, exploit the people, and pollute the environment.
- Exaggerated:
- Troperia is a Dystopia run by Those Wacky Nazis who are or were Corrupt Politicians and Corporate Executives. All but the richest few must eat rats just to survive, the air is practically unbreathable and water undrinkable due to all the pollution, and the ruling businesspeople often engage in horrific acts purely For the Evulz. And they ban Weird Trade Unions to boot.
- Every socialist, feudal, or anarchist society in the setting is a Utopia in its own right. Conversely, capitalist Troperia is a Dystopian, Fascist, but Inefficient Hell on Earth in which people know nothing but endless suffering.
- Downplayed:
- Economic inequality, racism, sexism, and other problems are known and widespread in Troperia, but people are trying their hardest to fix them.
- Troperia is indeed a capitalist Dystopia where people suffer needlessly and money trumps rules — but the neighboring country of Tropetania has made a capitalist market economy work for its people, simply by having tough, well-enforced anti-monopoly laws and common business standards to enforce fair competition in its market. Rather than being hindrances, the regulations of Tropetania do a splendid job in disincentivizing negative externalities that would otherwise be detrimental to the society. Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism is thus in effect.
- Justified: Troperia's system is deeply corrupt and its laws are written to cause maximal harm to the common people.
- Inverted:
- Troperia is the most prosperous nation on the planet.
- Troperia is actually a Commie Land.
- Every socialist, feudal, or anarchist society in the setting is a Fascist, but Inefficient Hell on Earth in which people know nothing but endless suffering. Conversely, capitalist Troperia is a complete Utopia in which people thrive on nothing but endless success.
- Subverted: It turns out that the popular image of Troperia as a Dystopia was simply propaganda spread by the communist People's Republic of Tyranny.
- Double Subverted:
- The actual Troperia is even worse and People's Republic of Tyranny is just trying to spare its citizens from seeing the unimaginable horrors of life in Troperia.
- The People's Republic of Tyranny exaggerated things, but Troperia is still a pretty awful place.
- Parodied:
- Satan Hitler is an outspoken proponent of capitalism and all the businessmen are his devout followers.
- Introducing any element of capitalism into the economy causes everything to deteriorate and break instantly, while introducing any element of socialism improves and fixes everything equally instantly.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Troperia does some things better than others. Other capitalist countries achieve better scores on the metrics of the quantity and quality of life, while others have worse scores. So do other feudal countries and other socialist ones.
- People's Republic of Tyranny's scathing depiction of Troperia as dystopic is, or rather, was, accurate. Things got worse in Troperia for a while, but then they got better.
- Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism is firmly in effect, with Troperia being the worst country on earth and Tropetania being the best country on earth even though both follow almost pure capitalist economics, and simply interpret the capitalist ideals completely differently.
- Troperia is an ultra-capitalist nation that, in theory, has high living standards and little to no direct oppression … yet somehow it suffers the exact same maladies as the USSR during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev. High-quality and non-standard goods are overpriced and hard to find. Getting "volunteered" for unpaid overtime is all too common. Nepotism and bribery are everywhere. The culture is staid and formulaic due to Executive Meddling. If you complain in any way, you stand to get blacklisted from all cushy jobs by the capitalist management, who will then impose the ones that nobody else wants on you.
- Averted:
- Troperia is a decent place to live.
- There is no exploration of the economic regime of Troperia, nor of any other country. Or, if there is, the creators don't make normative statements about any economic regime.
- Enforced:
- The writers have chosen socialists as their target audience and attempt to win them over by portraying the (alleged) evils of capitalism.
- The work is produced in an anti-capitalist dictatorship, such as the Soviet Union, where the censors enforce negative portrayals of capitalism.
- The show where Troperia appears is crowdfunded and produced by a motley TV crew where everyone's work and projects got repeatedly Screwed by the Network before, and so the creators don't have any drive whatsoever to flatter capitalism.
- Lampshaded: "I really don't think capitalism is making our lives any better. Just look at this crap!"
- Invoked: The capitalists in charge of the Troperian economy enrich themselves and don't care about seeing that everybody else has what they need.
- Exploited:
- The communist revolutionaries promise to end the evil capitalism if they take over the government, which causes most Troperians to support their goals.
- The opportunistic capitalists themselves promote the idea that capitalism is bad, selling items that enable the customers to express their statements.
- Defied: The capitalists implement policies that grow Troperia's economy but first make sure to protect its environment and citizens' lives.
- Discussed: "What if we had a non-capitalist economy? We might be better off."
- Conversed:
- "Somebody said that in an episode of the top-rated show on commercial TV. Clueless Aesop, anyone?"
- "Somebody said that in an episode of a show that was cancelled due to low ratings. The writers were just jealous of the shows that succeeded where theirs failed."
- Deconstructed:
- Capitalism as practised in Troperia may be harming most people, but socialism wouldn't be appreciably better and might, indeed, be worse.
- The socialism that replaces Troperia's capitalist ways ends up being unviable and is only supported by soft capitalism. When the economy goes bad, so does the new government who start brutally cracking down on all dissent against them, real or imagined.
- The people of Troperia get so sick of the state fucking them over that they decide to become anarchist. Despite the occasional conflict, things end up working far better with common decency and order among the people winning out.
- Due to all the pollution, environmentalist groups force the capitalist fat cats out of town. Then they turn Troperia into an eco-fascist hellhole, which is just as bad for different reasons.
- Reconstructed:
- The capitalist villain says this (with "Let's See YOU Do Better!" as subtext, text, or both). The heroic socialist faction the capitalist is against takes it as a Dare to Be Badass and produces a plan for socialism that would improve Troperia for the better.
- The people of Troperia decide to start a revolution against the fat cats and the state, before turning Troperia into an anarcho-capitalist state.
- Implied: Alice was in Troperia for some time and is telling Bob, back home in Wikiland, how she looks forward to returning to "home sweet socialist home."
- Played for Laughs: The capitalist leadership of Troperia is portrayed as a bunch of Stupid Evil buffoons, and the protagonists are tricksters who defeat them with civil disobedience and slapstick comedy.
- Played for Drama: The story opens with the main characters suffering under Troperia's brutal capitalist regime, and their discontent quickly opens the way for a dramatic revolutionary war plotline.
- Played for Horror: Troperian capitalism is portrayed as a nightmarish system of unending oppression and torment by a Lovecraftian Cyberpunk horror film.
Don't go back to the capitalist main page. Capitalism Is Bad!
