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Trump != capitalism Capitalism is: - freedom to own property - freedom to use or trade property you own - freedom to trade services for property or othe
by TimTheTinker 8y ago
Trump != capitalism
Capitalism is:
- freedom to own property
- freedom to use or trade property you own
- freedom to trade services for property or other services
Of course that's not enough to create a viable society. Whatever else you add to the sauce is not capitalism, it's something else.
- TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago> Capitalism is The items listed have nothing to do with capitalism. More like "things you often find" or "things you wish were true", or more aptly, "things you are told are true, but are misleading". "freedom" to own things is not a freedom nor is it guaranteed in a capitalism economy nor is it true when faced with anything other than a nascent capitalist economy where other actors make the decision of who owns what, beyond your own agency. I'm not sure you know what capitalism is now.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoCapitalism as a label only began to exist in order to draw a distinction between "capitalist" societies and societies where those particular freedoms are denied.
- jstewartmobile 8y agolibertarian edition of "we've never achieved true communism"
- TimTheTinker 8y agoTrue communism is impossible without perfect (i.e. morally incorruptible) people. People who hate on "capitalism" are often (I think) troubled by the behavior of rich/powerful people. I am too. But the solution isn't to remove property rights.
- jstewartmobile 8y agoBoth are over-abstracted materialist belief systems of how society should function. The new religions.
- fallingfrog 8y agoI would have to disagree with that, because it's too broad. I would say it is true that you can't have a society with no feedbacks- in other words, consequences. Carrots and sticks. In capitalism, the most important feedback is profit. But profit as the main feedback path has obvious problems- it ignores human suffering and environmental damage and so forth. That's why pure capitalism can only exist as an abstraction. You have to put it within a very carefully designed legal system. Communism is the same way. A society where every product of industry is free, and nobody has to work, is obviously silly. However a communist society with appropriate consequences in place is completely plausible.
- throwaway37585 8y ago> a communist society with appropriate consequences in place is completely plausible Example?
- throwaway37585 8y agoCan you explain your comment?
- jstewartmobile 8y agoI don't have a dog in this fight, but when I bring up some pathology of "capitalism" (like planned obsolescence for example) with one of my libertarian friends, they come back with "oh, but we're not working under -true- capitalism", and I'm like "gee, that sounds so familiar"
- TimTheTinker 8y agoMy reaction to stuff like that is "regulate it". Big businesses have to be regulated to prevent abuse... nothing wrong with that. Raise up the lowly (by giving them as much freedom as possible and leveling the field between them and the powerful), bring down the lofty (by regulating them to the extent that their power takes freedom away from the lowly)... that's the ideal economic policy as I see it :)
- jstewartmobile 8y agoSounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Overview Tried to post earlier, but got rate-limited for pissing off dang a while back.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoWow, never heard of this before. This is pretty close to where I stand. Guess I was wrong about the definition of “capitalism”.
- throwaway37585 8y agoIsn't the difference that, empirically, the more socialist a country becomes, the more its living standards deteriorate, while the more liberal a country becomes, the more its living standards improve?
- fallingfrog 8y agoThis is a popular misconception. All societies including feudal ones and modern socialist societies have private property. What capitalism means is that the people who own the places where people work, and the people who do the work, are not the same people. An alternative might be a society in which all the businesses were worker owned; it would still be a free market society, but since the businesses were all owned and controlled by the employees, there would be no stock market and would not be capitalism.
- TimTheTinker 8y ago> All societies including feudal ones and modern socialist societies Who says those weren’t/aren’t capitalist? By my definition they are, to the extent that they meet the criteria.
- dylan-m 8y agoTaken too far, capitalism is also private, for-profit prisons, it turns out. How are those going for you?
- TimTheTinker 8y agoI hate those too. A lot of government functions should never be outsourced to industry.