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I've argued with you on here before, and I have to say that you rely heavily on the generalized rhetorical appeal to authority of "read up on this." That point

I've argued with you on here before, and I have to say that you rely heavily on the generalized rhetorical appeal to authority of "read up on this." That point aside, to take your point that "People were freely exchanging and consenting to transactions before the advent of capitalism." People were also successfully having babies before we knew how sperm fertilized eggs. Of course free exchange of resources existed before the formal definition of capitalism, the free exchange of resources is the foundation for society, but you're being beyond obtuse if you're looking to define capitalism as anything other than the laissez-faire free market. If you wanted to argue against a capitalist on the basis of whatever academic definition you're going off of, and that isn't what you effectively mean by the term, then you are very likely to be arguing about incongruent concepts altogether. And if you simply cannot accept my definition of capitalism, then please substitute the term with "laissez-faire free markets" wherever you see it in my argument, and please make your arguments accordingly.

claudiawerner 8y ago
>You're being beyond obtuse if you're looking to define capitalism as anything other than the laissez-faire free market. This seems like you're being willfully ignorant of what capitalism actually means and using "academic" as a pejorative, as if for some reason actually gaining knowledge about the topic shouldn't be considered valid knowledge. Would you say the same thing about how mathematicians define "real numbers"? That it is merely an academic exercise? It is a term of art in economics and sociology, it does not describe merely a system of free exchange in general. Capitalism includes the concept of free exchange but it is not defined only as such. It's also not even used in the way you're using it, as an ideological descriptor - a capitalist is a very particular kind of person, in particular one who owns capital. It is not equivalent to "socialist" in this regard. The arguments against capitalism generally also apply to "laissez-faire free markets", but other than that, a "laissez-faire free market" could not exist without capital due to the development of technology in the modern world.

claudiawerner 8y ago

>You're being beyond obtuse if you're looking to define capitalism as anything other than the laissez-faire free market. This seems like you're being willfully ignorant of what capitalism actually means and using "academic" as a pejorative, as if for some reason actually gaining knowledge about the topic shouldn't be considered valid knowledge. Would you say the same thing about how mathematicians define "real numbers"? That it is merely an academic exercise? It is a term of art in economics and sociology, it does not describe merely a system of free exchange in general. Capitalism includes the concept of free exchange but it is not defined only as such. It's also not even used in the way you're using it, as an ideological descriptor - a capitalist is a very particular kind of person, in particular one who owns capital. It is not equivalent to "socialist" in this regard. The arguments against capitalism generally also apply to "laissez-faire free markets", but other than that, a "laissez-faire free market" could not exist without capital due to the development of technology in the modern world.