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In my opinion Capitalism is not the perfect system, it's better than the alternatives. That, however, doesn't mean we should not criticize and try to amend any

• atemerev 10y ago
  Capitalism is free competitive markets and inability to lobby the government into protecting coercive monopolies. I don't know if anywhere in the world pure capitalism exists.
  • bad_user 10y ago
    Many monopolies are natural and the free market concept isn't infallible. That a truly free market doesn't exist might hint that it's not possible. True communism has never happened either.
    • atemerev 10y ago
      This is why I mentioned _coercive_ monopolies. Natural monopolies are OK (e.g. Google search), as long as nobody tries to protect them by law and force.
      • kristofferR 10y ago
        How do you define force? If natural monopolies are left unchecked to grow in power, how can you be sure that they won't become powerful enough to use force to protect their or their cartels' interests?
        • atemerev 10y ago
          Because the ability to use force is generally a monopoly of the government, precisely for that reason. A better question would be "how can I be sure that capitalists and government won't cooperate for establishing monopolies"? For that, I don't have an adequate answer. At least, in capitalism, there are competitors lobbying against it, creating some virtual political market. Full government monopoly is generally much worse.
          • kristofferR 10y ago
            I think we disagree on the definition of force. I don't think of force as just the power of law, but also the power of size and power. A natural monopoly could, without any government interference or help, exert a lot of the same coercive tactics a government-supported monopoly can. With a large enough size, a natural monopoly could make the barriers of entry for any potential competitor so insurmountable that it would have the same effect as making competition illegal.
      • bad_user 10y ago
        Yes, but once a monopoly happens, that market is no longer free, competition becoming impossible without regulation. A monopoly can also supply virtually unlimited resources for expanding in other markets without breaking any antitrust laws. The only thing that can break monopolies naturally is technologicall progress, because only new technologies can make older monopolies obsolete. But then again, relying on a constant stream of innovation to keep our economy from collapsing seems like a losing battle. And also, lately technology is all about making rich people richer and poor people poorer. So much for hope.
        • atemerev 10y ago
          Why you can't compete with Google? It is a monopoly, but there are some competitors (Bing, DuckDuckGo). One misstep from Google, and its monopoly is lost.
          • bad_user 10y ago
            You can't seriously claim Bing and DuckDuckGo are competition. Bing only survives because Microsoft has deep pockets, a result of their monopolies and huge war chest of course. It now powers Yahoo's Search (since their own search engine is long dead) and DuckDuckGo. You see, DDG is nothing more than a glorified UI over Bing's infrastructure. And no, competing with Google Search isn't possible, unless you're Microsoft and like to play pretend.
            • deleted 10y ago
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            • rtehfm 10y ago
              You don't think that Google search enjoys being on hundreds of million devices? Remember 1999-2001 when Google unseated Yahoo from the king of search? It was a feat that seemed impossible when you had established search engines like Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Excite, DogPile, etc. all competing in the space. As with most industries and its enterprises, you'll always have an event horizon and then singularity until markets are saturated and the industry becomes irrelevant to the consumer.
      • conjectures 10y ago
        Why would natural monopolies be OK in general? The screwed up train system in the UK is a natural monopoly under lax regulation. It means we face high fares, bad service and low investment.
        • atemerev 10y ago
          Railroads are doomed anyway (except maybe cargo, though self-driving trucks can change that), when London to Paris plane ticket can bought for £30. Lost cause. This is possible because railroads are hierarchical, and all other means of travel are point-to-point. Networks always win against hierarchies.
  • kristofferR 10y ago
    Isn't pure capitalism also the inability of the government to prevent/dissolve coercive monopolies?
    • atemerev 10y ago
      No. This notion originated in the theory of none other than Vladimir Lenin, who took Marx framework and extended it. See his famous "Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism" essay. While this essay is not without merit, I doubt that Lenin can be counted as the expert on what capitalism is.
      • kristofferR 10y ago
        That's basically a reverse appeal to authority. "Lenin had that idea and Lenin was a bad guy" isn't a real argument on why you disagree with the idea. Please explain why, I'm actually interested in understanding your point of view.
        • atemerev 10y ago
          Because using government power (and physical force in general) to coerce people into using some product or service isn't a free market anymore, and therefore isn't capitalism. In the US (arguably still the freest economy in the world), there is no free market in healthcare, education, and other heavily regulated sectors — not without the influence of current market monopolies willing to keep the status quo. So, Lenin was right in that capitalism can easily evolve into government cronyism if left unchecked. But then it isn't capitalism anymore.
          • kamaal 10y ago
            >>Because using government power (and physical force in general) to coerce people into using some product or service isn't a free market anymore, and therefore isn't capitalism. This is precisely what British East India Company did in India. >>So, Lenin was right in that capitalism can easily evolve into government cronyism if left unchecked. But then it isn't capitalism anymore. Capitalism or Communism, the issue is accumulation of a lot of power in a few hands. Once that happens, things are basically done for the benefit of a few banks/dictators/rulers and then things start going downhill from there.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    Capitalism is more specific than that; you also need private property, including of firms.
    • atemerev 10y ago
      Free markets mean free trade. You can't freely trade anything without private property, can you? A corporation is just the convenient legal form to aggregate earnings and liabilities from cooperative action.
      • icebraining 10y ago
        Many people have written about markets without capitalism; this book includes a nice collection of writings on that topic: http://distro.libertarianleft.org/for/bookshelf-of-the-libertarian-left/chartier-and-johnson-markets-not-capitalism/?referredby=c4ss.org http://distro.libertarianleft.org/for/bookshelf-of-the-liber...
  • spriggan3 10y ago
    > Capitalism is free competitive markets and inability to lobby the government into protecting coercive monopolies Isn't more the definition of classical liberalism rather than capitalism as an economical system ? Because you could argue that China's economy is capitalist yet there is virtually no difference between the state and most of the Chinese industry.
  • WalterSear 10y ago
    It only describes a temporary state of events. A free market gets sold, or it's not a free market.
• threesixandnine 10y ago
  Capitalism is perfect system. The thing is that there's no real capitalism anywhere in the world.
  • rmchugh 10y ago
    communists say the same thing, I don't think you can completely separate a theory and its implementations though.
  • return0 10y ago
    ... said every proponent of every $x-ism ever.
  • dkopi 10y ago
    Capitalism is far from perfect. And treating capitalism as if it should be perfect is exactly what causes people to move away from it. Capitalism isn't perfect. it's just the best we have given the alternatives.
  • beefield 10y ago
    Yes. Perfect system for perfect people. Problem is not lacking perfect capitalism but lacking perfect people in the first place.
  • paulojreis 10y ago
    Much like communism, right?
  • aethr 10y ago
    There is no "perfect system" in the same way that there is no "perfect algorithm", unless you can define the goal. What is the best sorting algorithm? Is it the one that sorts a random list in the shortest time? Or the one that uses the least memory? Most likely we'll pick by balancing a few important metrics, which leaves us with "optimal". Far from perfect. If we're discussing Capitalism vs Socialism, instead of criticizing the opposition for ignorance (like every comment below the WashPo story), let's accept that different groups are optimizing for different goals. And there are so many competing objectives: efficient distribution of wealth, national economic growth, safety net for unlucky/disadvantaged, protecting shared resources (environment), etc etc etc.
• js8 10y ago
  > Capitalism is not the perfect system, it's better than the alternatives This is really not generally true. I would gladly take socialism in the Czechoslovakia over capitalism in some third world country (say Pinochet's Chile). Capitalism worked very well in the West after the WWII, but that system had strong elements of socialism, too. But it's important to realize that for many third world countries, capitalism was not a success. On the other hand, what was generally successful was democratic governance (maybe with exception of India and China). This is often conflated with (real world) capitalism (and dictatorship with socialism). But they really are pretty much orthogonal ideological axes.
  • kamaal 10y ago
    I general anything works fine as long you are the monopoly. If every country in the world would be a capitalist nation, then it will be back to the same donkey slogging for everybody. >>On the other hand, what was generally successful was democratic governance (maybe with exception of India and China). As an Indian, Let me tell you. It is actually quite successful in India. Issues in India have more to do social-cultural set up of the society than anything else. You don't change these sort of things with change in governance and economic systems. Free market/Communism/Socialism aren't panacea. One needs to stop looking them as hammers and all problems as nails.
• kuschku 10y ago
  Social Market Capitalism is the best working system we have currently – but a lot of people are working against it.
• mbrock 10y ago
  There is the question of what we mean by capitalism. Is capitalism simply the state of affairs of contemporary Western society? In that case, capitalism includes things like labor unions, state regulations, corruption, etc. So the word refers to a very dynamic and tumultuous process involving constant struggle between opposing forces. That's never going to be a "perfect system" of course. What we think of as opposition to capitalism is then a big part of how the system regulates itself. But maybe capitalism is more correctly thought of as a certain set of forces and structures operating in the larger state of affairs. For example, capitalism is whatever is advocated for by those who own and manage concentrated capital. Then, too, opposing this should be natural for anyone who doesn't belong to that class and doesn't expect to. I'm just saying that the concept "capitalism" deserves analysis if we want to talk about whether it's good or bad and to what degree "we" should oppose it or try to change it.
  • kamaal 10y ago
    >>Is capitalism simply the state of affairs of contemporary Western society? So it seems. Also remember nearly much of the economic progress in the west is the direct result plundering the wealth of other countries by colonizing them. If they had to play by the same rules as everyone else. Things would be way different.