7 ms·

I think when people say "fake capitalism" or "true capitalism" they're talking about unrestricted and unregulated free markets. It's also important to realize t

by lgregg 8y ago

I think when people say "fake capitalism" or "true capitalism" they're talking about unrestricted and unregulated free markets. It's also important to realize that the thought tied to Communism and Capitalism is one in the same; I'm sure most would be surprised that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the ones that coined the phrase and idea of Capitalism. > Capitalism sets up incentives for people to figure out regulatory capture and lobbying in whatever regime you come up with. Capitalism sets up incentives for companies to influence the public to believe that certain forms of government intervention are perfectly natural (take copyright, for instance - if you convince everyone to get rid of copyright, you'll just set up incentives for companies to convince everyone to bring it back). If you think this isn't working right, please work with the folks who want to figure out an alternative. I like your line of thought but I'm unsure if I agree with the fact that copyright could be incentivized to come back but that's just an opinionated view of mine. It started with the structure of the government from the beginning making it was a day 0 idea. There are also different types of capitalism; China's capitalism is different from US capitalism. So, that also is something to consider with the "fake capitalism" issue you brought up. Overall, I think one baseline to be able to tell if capitalism is working is if one can actually go from rags to riches in today's time. I also think what people are picking at is the imbalance that happens at an economy of scale when a company becomes so large that it is the market.

geofft 8y ago
> I think when people say "fake capitalism" or "true capitalism" they're talking about unrestricted and unregulated free markets. As far as I can tell, by "fake capitalism" the author means the opposite of "competitive free markets" (emphasis mine), not unregulated ones. In fact, the author says, "The federal government has done little to prevent this concentration, and in fact has done much to encourage it." - i.e., the author supports increased regulation and government intervention as long as it's in the appropriate direction.
- lgregg 8y ago
  Yeah, I agree with your assessment of the author. I should have detailed that I was getting at more of my personal experience talking with some hardline libertarians and free market anarchists.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I think the key distinction is capitalism vs corporatism. Corporatism is feudalism wearing a capitalist mask. The elite companies in the top do operate in a free market, but the story for the rest of society is radically different. I think in the US today we have a corporatist society. Your kid wants to setup a lemonade stand on the lawn? Get ready for a visit from the police. A multinational corporation wants to produce and sell a product that involves a real possibility of poisoning the groundwater? Sure, we're all about capitalism! It's a really ridiculous system and it's the consequence of the fact that regulatory organizations have started to become a tool for multinationals to exploit at their whims, rather than a tool to effect positive change in society as a whole. So it ends up in a system where individual to small business capitalism is hyper over-regulated whereas big business and multinational capitalism is regulated on paper yet laissez faire in practice.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Capitalism is simply the private ownership (including ability to transfer) the means of production. This is still true of the corporatist variety - unlike feudal fiefs, corporations can be bought and sold, and that makes all the difference. The only way for a feudal to aggregate more power is to go to war with other feudals for more lands, because a fief is land tenure, not property. In capitalism, because capital is property, it can be aggregated by buying it, and the more you aggregate, the more powerful you become, letting you acquire more capital etc - a positive feedback loop which means that monopolies are inevitable in pure unregulated capitalism. Regulation is orthogonal to all that, so long as it does not interfere with the ability to aggregate capital. You can tax the corporations heavily, you can impose various safety standards on them, you can have consumer rights commissions etc - it makes it harder for them to make money from the capital that they own, but it doesn't change the fundamental equation of capital -> money -> more capital, and therefore the result is still capitalism. The only way you can stop this cycle is by imposing a limit on how much capital can be held in one hands.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    Artificially limiting the 'means of production' (which is such an increasingly inappropriate and dated concept to use for these sort of discussions) is precisely the issue. Imagine a kingdom where a king created rules that, in effect, named exactly one black smith owning [puppet], one tavern owning [puppet], one brothel owning [puppet], etc. And these individuals were free to buy, sell, and trade these businesses so long as the transactions remained within the regulations of the king. That's not capitalism, not even a little. And that is really the issue. The further you limit the ability of people to engage the market (as buyer and seller) the further away you move from capitalism. And that is precisely what our current system is doing. Repeating the same example just because it's so stupefying. In most places in America today you cannot legally setup a lemonade stand and start selling lemonade on your own property. We're creating a culture of passive consumers driven by extreme regulations against everything except such!
why_only_15 8y ago
Capitalism lacked a single intellectual backing in the way that communism did (speaking in general terms). Wikipedia also says differently on the etymology of capitalism - Louis Blanc was apparently the first person to use it in the modern sense [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology

by lgregg 8y ago

geofft 8y ago

> I think when people say "fake capitalism" or "true capitalism" they're talking about unrestricted and unregulated free markets. As far as I can tell, by "fake capitalism" the author means the opposite of "competitive free markets" (emphasis mine), not unregulated ones. In fact, the author says, "The federal government has done little to prevent this concentration, and in fact has done much to encourage it." - i.e., the author supports increased regulation and government intervention as long as it's in the appropriate direction.

lgregg 8y ago
Yeah, I agree with your assessment of the author. I should have detailed that I was getting at more of my personal experience talking with some hardline libertarians and free market anarchists.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

I think the key distinction is capitalism vs corporatism. Corporatism is feudalism wearing a capitalist mask. The elite companies in the top do operate in a free market, but the story for the rest of society is radically different. I think in the US today we have a corporatist society. Your kid wants to setup a lemonade stand on the lawn? Get ready for a visit from the police. A multinational corporation wants to produce and sell a product that involves a real possibility of poisoning the groundwater? Sure, we're all about capitalism! It's a really ridiculous system and it's the consequence of the fact that regulatory organizations have started to become a tool for multinationals to exploit at their whims, rather than a tool to effect positive change in society as a whole. So it ends up in a system where individual to small business capitalism is hyper over-regulated whereas big business and multinational capitalism is regulated on paper yet laissez faire in practice.

int_19h 8y ago
Capitalism is simply the private ownership (including ability to transfer) the means of production. This is still true of the corporatist variety - unlike feudal fiefs, corporations can be bought and sold, and that makes all the difference. The only way for a feudal to aggregate more power is to go to war with other feudals for more lands, because a fief is land tenure, not property. In capitalism, because capital is property, it can be aggregated by buying it, and the more you aggregate, the more powerful you become, letting you acquire more capital etc - a positive feedback loop which means that monopolies are inevitable in pure unregulated capitalism. Regulation is orthogonal to all that, so long as it does not interfere with the ability to aggregate capital. You can tax the corporations heavily, you can impose various safety standards on them, you can have consumer rights commissions etc - it makes it harder for them to make money from the capital that they own, but it doesn't change the fundamental equation of capital -> money -> more capital, and therefore the result is still capitalism. The only way you can stop this cycle is by imposing a limit on how much capital can be held in one hands.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Artificially limiting the 'means of production' (which is such an increasingly inappropriate and dated concept to use for these sort of discussions) is precisely the issue. Imagine a kingdom where a king created rules that, in effect, named exactly one black smith owning [puppet], one tavern owning [puppet], one brothel owning [puppet], etc. And these individuals were free to buy, sell, and trade these businesses so long as the transactions remained within the regulations of the king. That's not capitalism, not even a little. And that is really the issue. The further you limit the ability of people to engage the market (as buyer and seller) the further away you move from capitalism. And that is precisely what our current system is doing. Repeating the same example just because it's so stupefying. In most places in America today you cannot legally setup a lemonade stand and start selling lemonade on your own property. We're creating a culture of passive consumers driven by extreme regulations against everything except such!

why_only_15 8y ago

Capitalism lacked a single intellectual backing in the way that communism did (speaking in general terms). Wikipedia also says differently on the etymology of capitalism - Louis Blanc was apparently the first person to use it in the modern sense [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology